This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

UN food agency chief urges end to trade barriers for food exports

As Russian and Ukrainian negotiators prepared on Wednesday to discuss ways to release millions of tonnes of cereals from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, a top UN agency chief appealed to countries that export key foodstuffs around the world not to make them more expensive than necessary.

Qu Dongyu, who’s head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told the agency’s Committee on Commodity Problems that it was “essential that countries stop using trade measures that add to price increases and extreme price volatility”.

Any protectionist tactics that exporting countries put in place will only “harm those that depend on global markets for their food security”, the FAO Director-General warned.

According to FAO, the global food import bill is on course to hit a new record high of $1.8 trillion this year.

This is because of higher prices and transport costs, rather than volumes.

Despite the fact that most trade happens within regions, “multilateral trade remains the most efficient way to promote market access and economic growth for all”, Mr. Qu insisted.

He said trade played a key role in ensuring global food security and sustainability, since it promotes food security and nutrition by linking food surplus regions, with those in deficit.

Mr. Qu also highlighted how FAO’s proposed Food Import Financing Facility would help to provide financial support to the countries worst-hit by the global food and energy crisis.

Sri Lanka: peace must prevail, urges UN human rights office

In Sri Lanka, a peaceful political transition must take place, the UN human rights office said on Wednesday.

The appeal on Twitter from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, (OHCHR), followed days of protests that have seen government buildings overrun, and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa reportedly flee the country.

Before the latest dramatic scenes in Colombo, the UN human rights office urged the Sri Lankan authorities to “show restraint” with demonstrators, after reports of the use of tear gas, water cannon and live ammunition against them.

Widespread economic misery is credited with sparking the latest widespread protests, as people have been forced people to queue for hours at petrol stations to buy fuel, while other basic needs, such as food, health and education, go unmet.

Russia: top rights experts condemn civil society shutdown

Top UN-appointed independent rights experts have condemned Russia’s “continued and heightened crackdown on civil society groups, human rights defenders and media outlets”.

In an appeal to Moscow to stop what they characterised as a “clampdown on civic space”, the rights experts insisted that the situation had worsened “dramatically” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Most independent Russian media outlets have closed down to avoid prosecution, or have been blocked along with dozens of foreign media, the rights experts continued.

They also noted that “over 20 media outlets stopped operating or suspended their work in the country, including the Nobel Peace Prize winning newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the last independent TV channel, Dozhd, and the radio station Echo of Moscow.

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are also blocked in Russia today, according to the rights experts, who said that Meta had been “designated an extremist organisation and banned”.

Of the many thousands of Russians who protested peacefully against the war, “over 16,000 (of them)…including many human rights defenders, have been detained for participating in or covering peaceful anti-war protests”, the experts said in a statement.

Excessive force was used against protesters and human rights defenders who had been detained, the experts alleged, along with humiliating and threatening tactics.

And those providing legal assistance to the detainees “have allegedly also been denied access to police stations and courts by law enforcement officials”, they said.

Multi-country hepatitis outbreak in children spreads: WHO

To global health now and in addition to tackling COVID and the monkeypox outbreak, the UN health agency has also been keeping a close eye on the puzzling spread of hepatitis in children, which has left dozens needing lifesaving liver transplants.

According to a new update from the World Health Organization (WHO), 35 countries in five regions of the world have reported more than 1,010 probable cases of unexplained severe acute hepatitis in youngsters, since the outbreak was first detected on 5 April.

So far, 22 children have died, and almost half of the probable cases have been reported in Europe, where 21 countries have reported 484 cases.

This includes 272 cases – or 27 per cent of the global total - in the UK, followed by the Americas, whose regional total of 435 includes 334 cases in the US, a third of global cases.

The next highest caseload is in the Western Pacific Region (70 cases), South-East Asia (19) and the Eastern Mediterranean (two cases).

Seventeen countries have reported more than five probable cases but the actual number of cases may be underestimated, in part owing to the limited enhanced surveillance systems in place, said WHO, which said that the current risk of the hepatitis outbreak spreading is “moderate”.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.