This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Bangladesh flooding leaves 1.5 million children at risk: UNICEF

Extensive floods in Bangladesh have put 1.5 million children at risk of disease, drowning and malnutrition, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said on Monday.

The UN agency is already working with the Government and civil society partners to respond to families’ most urgent needs in northeast regions, by supplying clean water, hygiene kits, therapeutic milk and learning kits for youngsters unable to go to school.

Over four million people in five regions have been affected by the rising waters.

The worst-hit - Sylhet and Sunamganj – have seen agricultural land and critical infrastructure submerged, including power stations and schools.

Cases of diarrhoea, respiratory infection and skin disease have been reported, according to a UNICEF update, and at least three children have died from lightning strikes.

Awareness-raising about the dangers of drowning, is also central to UNICEF’s community response, it said.

Global jobs market recovery is going into reverse, warns ILO

The recovery of the global jobs market is going into reverse, the UN labour agency, ILO, said on Monday, blaming COVID and “other multiple crises” that have increased inequalities within and between countries.

In its latest update on the world of work, International Labour Organization Director-General Guy Ryder said that there had been “tentative signs of recovery in the final months of last year, with global employment returning to higher levels in industrialised nations.

Today, however, rising food and fuel prices and financial turbulence have destabilised the job market, Mr. Ryder explained.

Another problem is global supply chain disruption that’s been made worse by the war in Ukraine, and the full impact of the Russian invasion is unlikely to be clear for many months yet:

“To a great extent this nascent labour market recovery has now stalled, or gone into reverse. In some, the recovery is in trouble. For example, in the last quarter of 2021 we saw significant gains in the number of hours worked globally. But in the first quarter of 2022, the number of hours fell again, it fell significantly.”

According to ILO, there are 112 million fewer full-time jobs today than there were before the pandemic.

Less industrialised economies have suffered setbacks in the first quarter of the year with available fulltime jobs down between 3.6 and 5.7 per cent, compared to pre-crisis levels.

UN rights chief Bachelet begins official visit to China

The UN’s top rights official, Michelle Bachelet, began her official visit of China on Monday – the first such high-level tour since 2015.

During her six-day visit, the High Commissioner for Human Rights is due to meet a number of high-level officials at the national and local level, along with civil society organisations, business representatives, academics, and she will deliver a lecture to students at Guangzhou University, her office said.

Ms. Bachelet is also due to go to Xinjiang region, where independent rights experts have raised serious concerns about the alleged detention and forced labour of Muslim Uyghurs in China.

Citing unnamed sources, the rights experts said that Uyghur workers had been allegedly subjected to exploitative working and abusive living conditions that may constitute arbitrary detention, human trafficking, forced labour and enslavement.

Nepal responsible for rape and execution of 16-year-old girl, says rights panel

The rape and killing of a teenage girl in Nepal by State security forces should be investigated thoroughly by the authorities, a UN rights panel said on Monday.

The Human Rights Committee ruling comes after the parents of a 16-year-old girl who was tortured, raped and shot dead by soldiers during the Nepalese Civil War in 2004, approached the UN body, having exhausted all national judicial remedies.

Committee member Hélène Tigroudja said that the gravity of the case had “not faded with time”, and that it underscored a pattern of abuse and rape of girls during the civil war, along with a lack of investigation and de facto impunity.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.