This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Gaza: More children dead than in four years of global conflict 

Amid reports of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza overnight into Wednesday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that more children have been killed there in recent months than in four years of conflict worldwide. 

“This war is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future,” said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.

In a social media post, he described as “staggering” latest Gaza health authority data indicating that at least 12,300 youngsters have died in the enclave in the last four months, which is more than the number killed globally in fighting between 2019 and 2022.

The UNRWA chief also reiterated repeated international calls for an immediate ceasefire in the enclave, where intense Israeli bombardment in response to Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel on 7 October has levelled entire neighbourhoods.

To date, more than 31,184 Palestinians have been killed, according to the local health authorities. As of 12 March, 247 Israeli soldiers have also died in Gaza with 1,475 injured since the start of the ground operation, Israeli army data shows.

With internal displacement at a record high, aid chief backs action call

The number of internally displaced people around the world is at a record high – well over 70 million – it’s a global crisis that needs collaborative solutions from the humanitarian community, the UN’s emergency relief chief said on Wednesday.

Martin Griffiths was speaking at a review of humanitarian efforts to help people uprooted by conflict, climate change or other emergencies.

He echoed concerns that help for the world’s internally displaced isn’t being delivered quickly enough by the United Nations and its partners, as escalating conflicts, large-scale disasters, water scarcity and food insecurity continue to fuel the number of people uprooted within their own countries.

“We need to use the access to communities in partnership with development partners and those who could think of solutions including mediation (and) the political community in that country, to see what those people can tell us of what they want; we should do it together because they will not distinguish between us.”

Humanitarians insist that reforms are needed to help internally displaced people because they suffer the worst health outcomes and the highest mortality rate of any other population group in emergencies.

But these changes are not happening quickly enough, according to a new report from UN agency heads and partners known collectively as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, or IASC.

It underlined that displaced people are the responsibility of affected countries, but when governments are “unable or unwilling” to offer solutions, humanitarians should step in. 

But today’s efforts are “too slow to respond” to vulnerable people’s needs and too slow to help them rebuild their lives, the IASC report warned, as it highlighted estimates that climate change could push more than 200 million people into displacement by 2050.

Ukraine: Condemnation after deadly Russian strike in central city

A Russian missile strike on a multi-storey apartment block in central Ukraine that left three dead and around 40 injured on Tuesday has been strongly condemned by the UN’s top aid official in Kyiv, Denise Brown.

In a statement Ms. Brown said that she was “appalled” at the attack which happened as families were gathering for dinner, “only to see their homes damaged and their loved ones injured".

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine said that the strike caused extensive damage to a residential building in Kryvyi Rih city, Dnipro Region, trapping people under the rubble, with children among the victims. 

The incident is part of a pattern of attacks not limited to frontline regions targeting civilian infrastructure and homes, Ms. Brown said. 

In its February 2024 update marking the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, UN human rights monitors said that more than 10,000 civilian deaths had been confirmed but that the true number was likely to be “significantly higher”.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.