With over 40 Palestinians killed and more than 5,500 injured during protests in Gaza over the past month – many by live ammunition – the top United Nations human rights official on Friday called on Israel to ensure that its security forces do not resort to use of excessive force amid the ongoing demonstrations.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is continuing with no prospects for a political resolution and “Gaza is about to explode,” a senior United Nations official said Thursday, urging both sides to avoid further clashes along the enclave’s border.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called for an independent and transparent investigation into clashes at the Gaza fence on Friday between Palestinians participating in the ‘Great Return March’ and Israeli security forces which resulted in at least 15 deaths and a large number of injured.
Reporting that over the past three months, Israel has advanced 22 plans for some 1,200 housing units for one area of the West Bank, a United Nations envoy warned Monday that such ongoing settlement expansion is eroding the prospect of a two-state solution to the long-standing Middle East conflict.
The lack of a political process to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to be the single largest impediment to Palestinian development, and an escalation in hostilities could completely break down service delivery in Gaza, a United Nations report said Friday.
The United Nations and its partners plan to deliver much-needed relief assistance to the besieged Syrian enclave of eastern Ghouta this week, the global organization’s humanitarian wing said on Sunday.
While welcoming the entry to force of a new Penal Code in Afghanistan as a having the “potential to trigger real change,” the United Nations mission in the country said on Thursday that it is concerned by the removal of the chapter penalizing violence against women.
After over a century of hostilities including 50 years of continued military occupation, Israelis and Palestinians are still no closer to peace, a United Nations special envoy said on Tuesday, warning that even as many in the region have lost hope for positive change, the enemies of peace are growing more confident by the day.
Describing January as “a dark month” in crisis-torn Middle East and North Africa, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) director for the region said Monday that the violence has had a devastating toll on children, who were being killed in ongoing conflicts or suicide attacks, or freezing to death as they fled active warzones.
The United Nations, the Security Council and the wider international community all have fallen into a pattern of “managing, rather than resolving” the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the UN envoy on the Middle East peace process warned Thursday, saying it was time to end this paralysis, show political leadership and push for policies on the ground that rebuild trust.
