After a three month long COVID-19-enforced break, the Human Rights Council resumed on Monday, giving the green light to a rare Urgent Debate on racism, alleged police brutality and violence against protesters sickened by the killing of American George Floyd in police custody.
A group of more than twenty senior leaders in the UN, who report directly to Secretary-General António Guterres, and who are African or of African descent, have put their names to a personal and hard-hitting statement published on Friday, expressing their outrage at pervasive and systemic racism, highlighting the need to ‘go beyond and do more’ than just offering condemnation.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has issued an urgent appeal for $186 million to provide lifesaving protection and assistance in the Sahel amidst fears that the conflict in the vast African region – exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic – will spread.
Huge gains made towards ending child labour over the last 20 years, risk being reversed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN said on Friday, in an appeal for governments to continue investing in measures that have helped reduce the number of youngsters working, by 94 million, since 2000.
Managing the digital divide better, has become “a matter of life and death” for people unable to access essential healthcare information during the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN chief has told a virtual high-level meeting on rapid technological change.
As COVID-19 hits the fossil fuel industry, a new UN report published on Wednesday shows that renewable energy is more cost-effective than ever – providing an opportunity to prioritize clean energy in national economic recovery packages and bring the world closer to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Journalists covering ongoing protests denouncing systemic racism and police brutality in the United States must be able to do their job in peace, two experts on the right to freedom of expression said on Wednesday.
Even as countries buckle under the devastating social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, they must consider the links between gender inequality and crisis, particularly in communities affected by climate change and conflict.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic could push nearly 50 million more people into extreme poverty, this and other dire impacts of the crisis can be avoided if countries act immediately to shore up global food security, the UN Secretary-General said on Tuesday.
Help and funding are needed urgently for millions of people in Nigeria who have been hit severely by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, including conflict-hit communities “on life-support” in the north-east, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.
