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The UK Government is “under an obligation” to end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago “as rapidly as possible” the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial body of the UN, stated in an Advisory Opinion released on Monday. The Opinion calls the continued administration of the archipelago “unlawful,” and “a wrongful act.”

Four years of “mind-boggling violence” in Yemen “has not spared a single child”, a top UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official said on Monday, on the eve of a pledging conference in Geneva to help alleviate the suffering of millions across the country. 

Sudan’s President Omar Bashir may have declared a country-wide “cessation of hostilities” but in the face of continuing nationwide protests against his rule, the peace process in Darfur has “once again” come to a standstill, a senior UN official told the Security Council on Monday.

A new global vision for arms control is needed and States must not “sleepwalk” into a new nuclear arms race, the UN Secretary-General said on Monday.

Sexual violence in conflict - and the stigma that survivors often face - must be addressed urgently, UN chief António Guterres said on Monday, in a joint appeal for more funding and international action, together with the head of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer.

People’s rights are under fire “in many parts of the globe,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Human Rights Council on Monday, before insisting that he was not “losing hope”, thanks to the progress made by powerful grassroots movements for social justice.

As tensions escalated on Saturday at various points along Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil, as well as within the country itself, resulting in the death and injury of various civilians, the United Nations chief, António Guterres, and the head of the UN human rights office (OHCHR), Michelle Bachelet, expressed their shock and appealed for calm.

Preparations are being finalized at the UN for conference to be held on Tuesday in support of a $4.2 billion appeal to scale up help to millions of people in Yemen, where years of war have created the world’s worst humanitarian emergency.

With over 3,800 civilian women, children and men killed in just one year, Afghanistan has hit yet another “deeply disturbing and wholly unacceptable” record, according to a new report issued on Sunday by the UN political mission in the country (UNAMA) and the UN human rights office (OHCHR).

The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and the UN Security Council condemned on Saturday in the strongest terms the attack against vehicles of the peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA), which took place on Friday and in which three "blue helmets" from Guinea were killed and at least another injured.