This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Afghanistan: UN’s Bachelet urges rethink on dissolution of rights body

The Taliban authorities’ decision to dissolve Afghanistan’s independent rights body will be a “deeply retrograde step” for the country’s people, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Thursday.

In a statement, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said that the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission had “performed extraordinary work in extremely difficult conditions over many years”.

The Afghanistan organisation had highlighted the human rights of all Afghans, including victims on all sides of the conflict, Ms. Bachelet insisted, noting that it had not been able to operate in the country since August 2021.

Ms. Bachelet said that during her visit to Kabul in March, she had urged the Taliban to re-establish an independent rights mechanism that could receive complaints from the public, and also raise concerns at an official level.

COVID-19 cases stabilize, deaths continue downward trend, says WHO

The number of new COVID-19 cases globally has stabilized, according to latest UN health agency data, while weekly deaths have continued to decline.

In its latest weekly update to 15 May, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported over 3.6 million cases of coronavirus infection - a one per cent increase on the previous seven days.

More than 9,000 people died over the same timeframe, which represented a 21 per cent drop from the previous week.

Regionally, the Eastern Mediterranean saw the highest jump in reported cases, up 63 per cent, followed by the Americas (up 26 per cent), the Western Pacific (up 14 per cent) and Africa (up six per cent).

Infections decreased in the two remaining WHO regions: Southeast Asia and Europe, and the number of new weekly deaths decreased in all regions except Africa, which saw a 48 per cent increase in fatalities.

Since the WHO declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in January 2020, there have been more than 520 million confirmed cases of the acute respiratory syndrome SARS, including over 6.2 million deaths.

A total of 11.7 billion vaccine doses have been administered also.

Concerns over violence against children in Pacific nation of Kiribati

UN Member State Kiribati is a union of 33 small atolls, scattered across a vast stretch of the Pacific Ocean – and its representatives have been in Geneva to discuss its progress on promoting children’s rights, in line with international law.

In discussions with UN-appointed independent rights experts from the Committee on the Rights of the Child all this week, officials from Kiribati said that they shared the panel’s serious concerns about violence against children in the island nation.

Violence in the home remains a problem, the Committee said, noting that nearly eight in 10 girls in Kiribati said that it was fine to be beaten if they did not respect their gender roles.

Acknowledging the child rights committee’s concerns, the delegation from Kiribati said that the Government had taken several steps to tackle violence against children, including banning corporal punishment in schools.

But the violent punishment of children by their parents is still practised in communities and families, and it is considered socially acceptable despite official condemnation, the Kiribati delegation explained.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.