This is the News in Brief, from the United Nations.

Malaysia in spotlight over forced returns from Myanmar

An alert from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, about the forced return of asylum-seekers from Malaysia to Myanmar.

There have been “multiple reports” of deportations since April, according to UNHCR, with hundreds of Myanmar nationals allegedly “sent back against their will” in the last two months.

The practice runs contrary to international humanitarian law and amounts to refoulement, said UNHCR spokesperson, Shabia Mantoo:

“According to information received by UNHCR, an asylum-seeker from Myanmar was deported on 21 October from detention despite UNHCR interventions...Such deportations of refugees and asylum-seekers amount to refoulement.”

Myanmar has been gripped by civil war since February and sending people back there “exposes them to harm and danger”, the UN agency insisted.

“The principle of non-refoulement is a cornerstone of international law and is binding on all States,” Ms. Mantoo told journalists in Geneva.

Ukraine war: at least 6,374 civilians confirmed dead

In Ukraine, at least 6,734 civilians have been killed since the Russian invasion on 24 February, UN human rights monitors have reported.

The scheduled update from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR, found that 16,150 non-combatants have also been injured, in eight months of fighting.

Of those killed, more than 2,488 were men and 1,700 were women; at least 368 boys and girls also died.

Explosive weapons “with wide area effects” were responsible for most of the casualties, the OHCHR report said, before highlighting how “shelling from heavy artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, missiles and air strikes” had caused the bloodshed.

Amid intense ongoing hostilities in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk regions, the UN monitors said that they had been unable to corroborate reports of “numerous” additional civilian casualties.

Heatwaves affect more than half a billion children today: UNICEF report

Heatwaves are an increasingly common health hazard for many nations, but they are set to affect four times as many youngsters by 2050, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, warned on Tuesday.

According to the UN agency, at least half a billion children are already exposed to a high number of heatwaves today.

But by the middle of this century, all the world’s children – more than two billion – will be affected, UNICEF said in a new report.

This is regardless of whether average temperatures rise by 1.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in line with low greenhouse gas emissions modelling, or whether they shoot up by 2.4 degrees, if emissions are high.

Protecting children from the escalating impacts of heatwaves should be a priority for all countries, UNICEF said, in a call for “urgent and dramatic emissions mitigation measures to contain global heating - and protect lives”.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.