This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Ukraine: ‘Immediate’ food security fears for conflict-hit regions

More than 870,000 people who fled abroad since the Russian invasion on 24 February have now returned to Ukraine, UN humanitarians said in their latest emergency update, amid concerns about deteriorating food security inside the country.

Citing the Ukrainian border guard, UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said that 30,000 people are crossing back every day.

The recent returnees reportedly include women with children and older persons, compared to mostly men at the beginning of the escalation.

Those returning face significant difficulties meeting their day-to-day needs, if returning to their homes is no longer viable, OCHA said.

Of the 12 million people in need in Ukraine, humanitarians have reached 2.1 million of them, and the UN’s $1.1 billion flash appeal for Ukraine is now 64 per cent funded.

Fighting is now concentrated in eastern and southern regions, causing damage and civilian casualties and driving humanitarian needs. OCHA also reported rockets strikes in central and northern Ukraine, and an assessment that almost half of Ukraine now needs demining.

UK’s migration ‘offshore processing’ deal with Rwanda in spotlight

Plans reportedly being made by the UK to ask Rwanda to process migrants are at odds with the responsibility that States have when it comes to taking care of people in need of protection, UN humanitarians said on Thursday.

In an initial response, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said that it understood that the plans were part of a migration and economic development partnership with Rwanda – and that it was not a party to negotiations that have taken place between London and Kigali.

In the past, UNHCR has spoken out against Australia’s migrant offshore processing policy which involved redirecting them to the island of Nauru, thousands of kilometres away in the Pacific Ocean.

The UN agency said in a statement: “Our position on externalization, is: UNHCR does not support the externalization of asylum States’ obligations. This includes measures taken by States to transfer asylum-seekers and refugees to other countries, with insufficient safeguards to protect their rights, or where this leads to the shifting rather than the sharing of responsibilities to protect refugees.  We thus urge governments to refrain from establishing practices that could externalize their asylum obligations.”

Coral reefs’ very survival is at stake, warns UNESCO in bid to boost resilience

The world’s best-known coral reefs could be extinct by the end of the century unless we do more to make them resilient to our warming oceans.

That’s the stark message from UNESCO, which is behind an emergency bid to protect these natural marine wonders, 29 of which are on the agency’s protected World Heritage list.

Our oceans are getting warmer because of increasing global carbon dioxide emissions.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) data also confirmed that States must reduce carbon emissions drastically, to meet the targets under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Most coral reefs face many other pressures, from pollution to overfishing and habitat destruction.

UNESCO’s plan, along with partners, is to reduce these threats and to strengthen the sustainable management of fragile marine reefs by supporting local communities. 

In all, the agency’s plan aims to work with 19 World Heritage-listed reefs that are found in developing countries, with financing from the Global Fund for Coral Reefs.

The development builds on the success of UNESCO’s Resilient Reefs Initiative which launched in 2018.

For the past four years, researchers have worked on four World Heritage reef pilot sites in Australia, Belize, New Caledonia and Palau.

The initiative demonstrated that local pressures can be reduced by empowering local communities and helping them to adapt their income and livelihoods to our changing climate.

“Global warming means that local reef conservation practices are no longer enough to protect the world's most important reef ecosystems. But a healthy, resilient reef can regenerate after a bleaching incident and survive,” explained Fanny Douvere, head of UNESCO’s Marine Programme.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.