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The international community must do more to end the inhumane practice of human trafficking and protect migrants and refugees – particularly young people, women and children – from those who attempt to exploit their opportunity for a better future, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, urging all nations to recognize their responsibility in combating the global scourge.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned today that some 77 million of the world’s newborns – or 1 in 2 – are not breastfed within the first hour of birth, depriving them of essential nutrients and antibodies and thus exposing them to an increased risk of death.

The United Nations human rights office said today it is shocked by video footage that has emerged from Don Dale youth detention centre in the Northern Territory in Australia, showing children as young as 10 years old – many of whom are Aboriginal children – being held in inhumane conditions and treated cruelly.

The United Nations human rights office today expressed concern over the three-year prison sentences handed down last week to 30 members of the main opposition party in Gambia, including its leader Ousainou Darboe, following their participation in peaceful protests in mid-April.

Two United Nations agencies warned the UN Security Council today that ongoing conflicts around the world have pushed more than 56 million people into “crisis” or “emergency” levels of food insecurity and are hindering efforts to eradicate malnutrition.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific today marked International Tiger Day with a call for urgent action to protect tigers and combat illegal trade in wildlife.

Opening the first meeting of the 2017 session of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the body’s new President, Frederick Musiiwa Makamure Shava, of Zimbabwe, said today that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a “rallying call” to address the complex challenges facing the world.

While welcoming recent political developments recently observed in West Africa, the United Nations Security Council today stressed the need to increase military cooperation between the States in the region and Sahel to fight against the terrorist group Boko Haram.

Two top media freedom experts of the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) today condemned the ongoing crackdown on journalists and the media by the Government of Turkey in the wake of the recent attempted coup.

The United States is struggling to live up to its ideals in the area of racial, social and economic inequality, which is negatively affecting the exercise of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, a United Nations human rights expert said today at the end of his first official fact-finding mission to the country.