his is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Ukrainian’s suffering must not become new normal: UN rights chief

The suffering in Ukraine must not become a new normal, the UN human rights chief said on Wednesday.

Speaking in Kyiv after an official four-day visit to the country, Volker Türk said that the scale of the damage and destruction impacting civilians that he had seen in Izium was “shocking”.

He added that he feared for all those caught up in the “long, bleak winter ahead” and that the consequences of the war on human rights in Ukraine had been devastating.

“The prognosis is very worrying,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said, noting that his Office continues to receive information about war crimes every day.

As a direct result of the Russian invasion on 24 February, 17.7 million people now need humanitarian assistance and 9.3 million require food and livelihood help.

The UN High Commissioner added that a third of the population has been forced to flee their homes, 7.9 million have left the country - the majority, women and children - and 6.5 million people are internally displaced. 

Thousands displaced by escalating conflict in South Sudan’s Greater Upper Nile Region

To Sudan, where escalating armed conflict in Upper Nile State has displaced some 20,000 people since August – including some who’ve fled for their lives.

In an alert on Wednesday, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said that the violence erupted initially in the village of Tonga, before spreading south and west to Jonglei and Unity states.

The town of Kodok in Upper Nile is now under threat and the UN refugee agency’s representative in South Sudan, Arafat Jamal, said that “desperation is rising”, and that more people are fleeing “as conflict intensifies”:

“It seems to be moving into a much more accentuated ethnic dimension, and we also are witnessing recurrent attacks on clear civilian infrastructure and on civilians themselves.”

Women and children and other vulnerable people make up the majority of those displaced and they remain at “high risk” because of the “clear pattern of attacks on civilians and their homes”, the UN agency official insisted.

The UN agency and NGO partners have scaled up their response to provide life-saving support to those most in need, including in hard-to-reach areas, by providing shelter, relief items, protection services, cash, and other assistance.

To help all those who continue to flee violence, UNHCR requires more help from donors; its $215 million appeal is only 46 per cent funded.

UN health agency debates ‘pandemic treaty’ to prevent future threats

A UN-partnered initiative seeking international agreement on a new “pandemic treaty” has been pushing ahead this week at the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO’s 194 Member States agreed to start the process of drafting and negotiating a convention after a special session of the World Health Assembly on 1 December 2021.

The aim is to adopt the legally binding instrument by 2024 so that future public health threats do not spiral into global emergencies, like COVID-19.

This could happen by strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness and response between countries, said WHO, which has stressed the need to ensure fair access to vaccines, personal protective equipment, information and treatment for all people, going forward.

The only similar international convention to have been created by the UN health agency in its 74 year existence is the  WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which has coordinated global efforts to protect people from tobacco since its entry into force in 2005.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.