This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Ukraine war: UN chief arrives for talks in Moscow as ‘messenger of peace’

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stressed the need to “keep alive the values of multilateralism” amid the war in Ukraine and its harmful impact across the globe.

Speaking in Moscow on Tuesday, he outlined proposals that would establish conditions to allow for safe evacuations of civilians and delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid.

The UN chief was in the Russian capital for talks with the country’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov. He will also be received by President Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Guterres told reporters he’d had “a very frank discussion” with Mr. Lavrov “and it is clear that there are two different positions on what is happening” in the wake of Russia’s invasion.

“It is my deep conviction that the sooner we end this war, the better – for the people of Ukraine, for the people of the Russian Federation, and those far beyond”, the UN chief said.

Healthcare attacks continue in Ukraine amid growing needs

Staying with Ukraine, the World Health Organization (WHO) condemned new attacks on Ukraine’s healthcare facilities on Tuesday, which have deprived people of emergency treatment and preventative care, such as vaccines.

There have been 164 attacks on healthcare to date, and 73 deaths as a result of those attacks and 52 people injured, WHO spokesperson Bhanu Bhatnagar said.

The development comes as UN aid coordination office, OCHA, upped its appeal for funding, to meet increased needs. Over $2.25 billion is now required for relief inside Ukraine, more than double the amount requested when the appeal launched on 1 March.

The estimated number of Ukrainians in need of humanitarian aid now stands at 15.7 million, up from 12 million two months ago.

Sand is not an infinite resource, countries’ development is at stake: UNEP

All countries in the world should be aware that their development is at stake unless they take better care of something that most of us take for granted: sand.

That’s the message from the UN Environment Programme, UNEP, which on Tuesday said that we cannot continue to keep taking 50 billion tonnes of the material out of the ground and sea every year, as we are doing, without serious consequences.

Given our dependency on sand, it should be recognised as a strategic resource and its extraction and use needs to be reassessed, said Pascal Peduzzi, Director of GRID-Geneva at the UN Environment Programme:

“Africa’s population is going to double from now and 2050 – that’s plus 1.27 billion people in the continent... All these key drivers are going to exacerbate the demand for sand, so if it’s not anticipated by governments we are going to run out of the right sand because people are going to take it from the beaches, from the rivers….and that will (increase) the competition between the food supply and the water supply.”

UNEP’s Sand and Sustainability report, provides guidance gathered from world experts to switch to improved practices for the resource’s extraction and management.

They say that although sand is a key construction material, governments, industries and consumers, should also realise that keeping sand on coasts may be the most cost-effective strategy for adapting to climate change, as it protects against storm surges and sea level rise. 

Matt Wells, UN News.