1.5 million homeless in Türkiye after earthquake disaster: UNDP 

The death toll from the 6 February earthquake disaster has topped 41,000 in Türkiye, UN development experts said on Tuesday. 

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) also warned that 1.5 million people have been made homeless in the south of the country, where at least 500,000 new homes will need to be built. 

Two further earthquakes on Monday killed six more people on the Türkiye-Syria border, injuring another 294 people and causing more buildings to collapse, reported Louisa Vinton, UNDP’s Resident Representative in Türkiye. 

Highlighting the staggering scale of the reconstruction challenge ahead, Ms. Vinton explained an estimated 116 to 210 million tonnes of rubble would have to be cleared away first.  

“Just to give you a frame of reference, the last major earthquake in Türkiye in 1999, which also had a high number of casualties - although less than less than half of what we're seeing now - that resulted in 13 million tonnes of rubble, so we’re a magnitude of 10 more than that and still counting.” 

In northwest Syria, where the international humanitarian response has continued, a total of 227 trucks loaded with supplies have crossed from Türkiye since 9 February; 195 using the Bab al-Hawa crossing, 22 across Bab al-Salam and 10 across Al Ra’ee. 

UN rights chief deplores Ukraine death toll one year after Russian invasion 

To Ukraine, where UN rights investigators have reported hearing disturbing testimonies about the high level of civilian casualties linked to the Russian invasion. 

Matilda Bogner, Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, told journalists in Geneva that the civilian death toll in the southern city of Mariupol was particularly high. 

“My colleagues interviewed a former prisoner of war, and he was from Mariupol and he was forced in Mariupol to collect the bodies on the city streets. He told us that Russian soldiers were expected to meet the daily quota of one truck of corpses per day. And that is, as he said, in Mariupol meeting with that quota was not a problem at all.”  

According to latest UN human rights office data, at least 8,000 non-combatants have been killed and nearly 13,300 injured since the Russian invasion on 24 February last year. 

In a statement deploring the human cost of the conflict, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said that every day that violations of international human rights and humanitarian law continue, “it becomes harder and harder to find a way forward through mounting suffering and destruction, towards peace”. 

$1.3 billion appeal for South Sudan refugees: UNHCR 

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, launched a $1.3 billion appeal on Tuesday to protect and assist 2.2 million displaced South Sudanese in the region. 

Host countries have generously welcomed South Sudanese refugees for years, but the long-term impact of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine have pushed up prices and unemployment, the UN agency warned on Tuesday. 

In a call for international support for the appeal, UNHCR explained that millions of refugees are unable to return home to South Sudan while their country faces sporadic violence and the unfolding climate crisis. 

Daniel Johnson, UN News.