This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Papua New Guinea landslide: UN chief’s solidarity with victims 

Amid news that thousands are now feared dead in a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea, UN Secretary-General António Guterres insisted that the United Nations stands ready to offer additional assistance as the rescue operation continues.

Video and images from the scene of the disaster in the remote northern highlands showed a wall of mud and people trying to dig with small shovels to reach villagers believed trapped beneath.

In a statement, the UN chief expressed his heartfelt condolences to the victims’ families in Enga province, adding that he stood in solidarity with the country’s people and government. 

According to the national disaster centre, the landslide last Friday night buried more than 2,000 people alive and destroyed buildings and food gardens, causing major disruption to one of Papua New Guinea’s economic lifelines.

Enga province is densely populated and home to a gold mine whose highway access is now completely blocked, according to the country’s national disaster centre.

The UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that it has six aid workers on site alongside other UN personnel, NGOs and government agencies. 

Conditions remain treacherous as water is still running down the mountainside that remains unstable.

Gaza: Mass casualties reported in Israeli attack on camp for displaced

Dozens of people are believed to have died in an Israeli overnight attack on a camp for displaced Gazans in Rafah in the south of the enclave, UN humanitarians said on Monday.

“Information coming out of Rafah about further attacks on families seeking shelter is horrifying,” said the UN for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in a post on X, after reports of an Israeli military strike on a tented camp in Tal as-Sultan in western Rafah, along with other shelters to the north in Jabalia, Nuseirat and Gaza City. 

Unconfirmed images posted online showed shelters burned to the ground and charred human remains at the site of the Rafah attack. 

Echoing widespread international condemnation of the attack, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, called for “concerted global action” to halt the war.

“Attacking women and children while they cower in their shelters in Rafah is a monstrous atrocity,” said Mr. Rajagopal, an independent human rights expert who is not a UN staff member. 

In a statement, the Israeli army denied deliberately targeting civilians and said that the strike had planned for two senior Hamas operatives. The attack, it said, was a “precise airstrike” in northwest Rafah that killed Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar in line with international humanitarian law.

Pandemic treaty is a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity’, says Guterres

To Geneva, where health leaders have gathered for the annual World Health Assembly, which this year heard a strong appeal from the UN chief to agree on a pandemic treaty to deal with the next global health emergency.

In a video message to delegates, António Guterres insisted that the Pandemic agreement represented a rare opportunity to revitalise existing international health architecture and build “the systems we need for the crises we know will come”:

“The Pandemic Agreement is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure the global health system can respond more quickly – and equitably – when the next pandemic strikes. I urge you to bring it to fruition.”

Mr. Guterres also urged the World Health Assembly to support amendments to the International Health Regulations, as part of efforts to respond better to public health emergencies like COVID-19.

Haiti: 2 in 3 households do not have enough to eat in capital, says WFP

More than two in three households in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince do not have enough to eat, UN humanitarians said on Monday.

According to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the villages of Cité Soleil, Croix des Bouquets and Carrefour were the worst-affected this month and at least four out of five households have turned to skipping meals or other negative coping mechanisms.

The UN agency reported a “significant and continuous drop” in earnings in the capital for six in 10 households, amid escalating gang violence and looting that has fuelled a dire humanitarian crisis and pushed Haiti’s health system to “the verge of collapse”, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Daniel Johnson, UN News.