This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Ukraine war has ‘inflamed’ food, energy and finance crisis: Guterres

As UN-led global food security discussions began on Wednesday in Rome, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that the war in Ukraine had already “inflamed … a crisis of food, energy and finance” that has affected the world’s most vulnerable people.

Speaking alongside Austria’s President Alexander Van der Bellen in Vienna, the UN chief said that global food security had been “the focus” of his recent meetings in Moscow and Kyiv, after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February.

“We need quick and decisive action to ensure a steady flow of food and energy in open markets,” he said, recommending the lifting of export restrictions, allocating surpluses and reserves to those in need, and addressing food price increases.

Despite the war, Mr. Guterres insisted that “a meaningful solution to global food insecurity” requires reintegrating into world markets Ukraine’s harvests and Russia and Belarus’s food production. 

Meanwhile the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) brought together European and Central Asian countries to find solutions to the war’s impact on global agrifood systems.

It has also launched a rapid response plan “to provide life and livelihood‑saving” support to farmers who cannot meet their basic food needs. 

4.8 million jobs lost in Ukraine since Russian invasion: ILO

Staying with Ukraine, almost five million jobs have been lost in the country over the last two and a half months, the UN labour agency, ILO, said.

New ILO data shows that the war has led to a 30 per cent drop in employment, and the agency predicts that if conflict continues, seven million people could be out of work in Ukraine.

Here’sHeinz Koller, ILO’s Regional Director for Europe & Central Asia, speaking in Geneva:

“According to estimates from the government employers’ organization, up to 50 per cent of the enterprises are either out of operation or really seriously limited in their operation.”

ILO also anticipates that neighbouring countries hosting Ukraine’s six million refugees could also struggle because of additional pressures on their labour markets and welfare systems and any economic deterioration within Russia would likely force migrant workers to return home – significantly affecting remittances.

Pledging conference on oil tanker in Yemen

The UN and Netherlands have co-chaired a pledging event in The Hague to prevent an environmental disaster by rescuing rusting oil supertanker FSO Safer off the coast of Yemen.

The vessel – moored off the key western port of Hudaydah – holds four times the amount of oil that caused the1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. 

After more than seven years of war, the UN warned that such a spill would cause lasting environmental damage with profound economic costs across the region and disrupt shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Suez Canal, resulting in daily trade losses of billions of dollars. 

As an oil-spill clean-up is estimated at $20 billion, the pledging conference aims to secure funding for a rescue plan that would save “tens of billions of dollars in the future,” said a UN statement.

Daniel Johnson, UN News