This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Gazans on verge of famine need ‘exponential’ aid boost, says UN

UN aid officials welcomed the news on Tuesday that an aid ship had left Cyprus for Gaza carrying 200 tonnes of supplies but they stressed that this was no substitute for overland assistance to Gazans on the verge of famine.

From the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, here’s spokesperson Jens Laerke:

“Any food and other emergency aid that comes into Gaza, as we all know, is desperately needed; there is no question about it. So it's highly appreciated…But it's not a substitute for the overland transport of food and other emergency aid into Gaza and particularly northern Gaza. It cannot make up for that.”

Earlier on Tuesday the international charity World Central Kitchen announced that its vessel, Open Arms, had set sail for Gaza, some 200 nautical miles away. 

Meanwhile, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, on Tuesday condemned the Israeli refusal to allow aid into the enclave - because it contained children’s scissors from a medical kit.

Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General tweeted that the “long list of banned items” also included “basic and lifesaving items”: anaesthetics, solar lights, oxygen cylinders and ventilators, water cleaning tablets, cancer medicines and maternity kits. 

WFP races to preposition aid in Chad for Sudan’s displaced

To Chad, where UN humanitarians are working around the clock to pre-position aid for Sudanese refugees before the rains come.

The World Food Programme, or WFP, announced the operation on Tuesday and warned that lifesaving programmes in Chad will stop because of a funding crunch “in a matter of weeks”.

Thousands of Sudan refugees continue to stream over the border into Chad to escape heavy fighting between warring generals that began last April. 

Around one million people have already sought shelter.

The aid they need must be delivered before seasonal rains flood roads serving camps for the displaced in the east, cutting off access, WFP said.

Most refugees cross the border into Sudan traumatised, hungry and with “horrific tales of violence”, the UN agency reported. 

It noted that the new arrivals “rely entirely on humanitarian assistance to survive” and that four in 10 Sudanese refugee children under five suffer from severe anaemia.

The UN agency explained that a “vital cross-border life-line supply route” into Sudan’s conflict-scarred Darfur region is also at risk. 

This is the only “reliable” route into embattled western Sudan, said WFP, which said that it made it possible to help one million people in Darfur since last August.

“Cutting assistance to communities facing this level of vulnerability is unthinkable,” WFP said, as it warned that families had no option but to “skip meals and eat less nutrition food”.

To ensure continued support to crisis-affected people in Chad over the next six months, WFP urgently needs $242 million.

‘Rampant’ abuse of counter-terrorism laws, Human Rights Council hears

Abuse of counter-terrorism laws is “rampant” around the world, a top rights expert told the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday.

Addressing the UN’s top rights forum, Special Rapporteur Ben Saul said that some governments’ anti-terror efforts were characterized by unlawful killings, arbitrary detention, torture, unfair trials and mass surveillance.

Freedom of expression had been criminalized too, the independent rights expert insisted, along with the basic right to freedom of assembly, association and political participation.

These measures “not only violate the rights of suspected criminals but can also jeopardise the freedoms of the innocent,” Saul said.

He pointed to “unjustified and protracted states of emergency” and “excessive military violence” by some authorities responding to terrorism.

Many governments had “failed to address the root causes of terrorism, including State violations of human rights”, he said.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.