This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Gaza: Increasing numbers of newborns on brink of death, agencies warn

UN humanitarians reiterated their resolve on Tuesday to aid the people of Gaza, where increasing numbers of children are on “the brink of death” from acute hunger, caused by five months of Israeli bombardment and aid access denials.

From the World Health Organization, WHO, here’s Dr Margaret Harris, speaking in Geneva:

“More and more they are seeing the effects of starvation. So they're seeing newborn babies simply dying because they too low birth weight. They are seeing the pregnant women who are coming in are also underweight and suffering the complication ones that occur if you are trying to carry a pregnancy and you lack the nutrition.”

UN human rights chief Volker Türk meanwhile said that “hunger, starvation and famine” in Gaza were the result of Israel’s “extensive restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods”, mass population displacement and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. 

The High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that “in the face of starvation” families have now resorted to sending children from northern to southern Gaza “unaccompanied - in the desperate hope that they will find food and support among the 1.8 million people already displaced there”.

Forced labour exploiters make $236 billion a year, says ILO 

Forced labour is happening all over the world and it’s earning criminal gangs an astonishing $236 billion a year - $64 billion more than a decade ago, UN researchers said on Tuesday.

In an alert, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said that this increase had been fuelled by the growing number of people forced to work illegally, but also by higher profits.

ILO senior research officer Federico Blanco told journalists in Geneva that traffickers and criminals make close to $10,000 per victim, around $1,700 more than they did in 2014:

“The human toll is also incalculable. These illegal profits represent wages, resources, livelihoods, effectively stolen from workers. This not only affects the workers themselves, but also their families and the flow of migrant remittances, disrupting entire communities.” 

The profits from forced labour are highest in Europe and Central Asia – at $84 billion - followed by Asia and the Pacific ($62 billion), the Americas ($52 billion), Africa ($20 billion), and the Arab States ($18 billion).

Forced sex work generates more than two-thirds of profits, even though it only involves around one in four of the overall number of people forced to work illegally.

This is because exploiters make more than $27,000 a year from each illegal sex worker, which is far more than the average $3,600 in profits generated by most other forms of forced labour.

More climate records smashed, UN weather agency report confirms 

2023 was a record-breaking year but not one that anyone wants, the UN weather agency said on Tuesday, as it confirmed unprecedented greenhouse gas concentrations, global air temperatures and more.

According to new data from the World Meteorological Organization, WMO, the world once again saw alarming ocean heat and acidification last year, along with ominous sea level rise, reduced ice sheet cover at the poles and the highest level of glacier retreat yet recorded.

Here’s the UN agency’s Secretary-General, Celeste Saulo:

“Scientific knowledge around climate change has existed for more than five decades. And yet we missed an entire generation of opportunity. It is imperative that our actions today are based on the welfare of future generations rather than short-term economic interests.”

The WMO’s latest State of the Global Climate report details the upheaval and trauma caused by increasing heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires and rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones – and the many billions of dollars these losses cause, too. 

Pooling data from multiple agencies, the UN agency study confirms that 2023 was the warmest year on record, at 1.45 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline. This is worryingly close to the 1.5 degree threshold that all countries pledged to try not to exceed when they signed the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.