As the Sahel region “stares down a horrendous food crisis”, the UN emergency food relief chief warned on Wednesday that the number of people on the brink of starvation has “increased almost tenfold” over the past three years and “displacement by nearly 400 per cent”.
Conflict prevention, counter-terrorism and support to Afghanistan, top the list of issues on which the UN and the Collective Security Treaty Organization – a Eurasian regional grouping comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan – should bolster their cooperation, Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Wednesday.
Haiti is once more at a ‘crossroads’, six months after a devastating earthquake hit the south-west of the country, according to the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed.
Migration is a “a defining feature of humanity and our world”, the UN chief told the General Assembly on Wednesday, launching his second report on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.
The UN Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan on Wednesday strongly condemned the continued violence across the country, which is affecting the safety of civilians and humanitarian workers, constraining humanitarian access, and disrupting the delivery of aid and services to thousands of vulnerable people.
On 14 August 2021, the southwest region of Haiti was hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake which led to widespread death and destruction. Some 2,200 people died, over 12,500 were injured and up to 800,000 people directly impacted. On Wednesday, six months on from the disaster, the Haitian government held an international pledging conference, in the hope of raising the $2 billion needed for reconstruction.
The Global Disability Summit began on Wednesday in Oslo, where UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged all countries to do more to put people living with disabilities “front and centre” of their post-COVID recovery plans.
Recent attacks on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia indicate how the conflict in Yemen risks spiralling out of control, the chief UN mediator for the country told the Security Council on Tuesday, as he called for “serious efforts” to be made by Yemeni parties, the region and the international community, to end the fighting, now in its seventh year.
Independent UN experts expressed deep concern on Tuesday over allegations that human rights defenders have been threatened at the Polish-Belarusian border, including media workers and interpreters.
Somalia’s leaders must put aside their differences and urgently conclude a credible election process, the UN’s senior official in the country told the Security Council on Tuesday, noting that national elections are now more than a year behind schedule and women’s representation remains significantly off-track.
