Latest News

Climate change poses severe and distinct threats to food security, and could subject an additional 600 million people to malnutrition by 2080, a United Nations human rights expert warned today.

To advance the values, principles and purposes of the United Nations, the General Assembly's role, authority, effectiveness and efficiency must be continuously reviewed and enhanced, the 193-member body's President, Mogens Lykketoft, said today, stressing the need for transparency throughout the UN system.

Marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has offered his deepest sympathies to the citizens of the State of Israel, and, noting current tensions in the region, urged all parties to be guided by the late Israeli leader’s realization “that the path to true security and strength is through dialogue and compromise.”

The top UN relief official in Libya today condemned the abduction of two aid workers in southern Libya and warned that persistent threats against humanitarian workers is hindering the delivery of crucial aid to those in need in that part of the war-torn country.

Expressing concern that spiralling wildlife and forest crime – fuelled by corrosive corruption – can impede vital progress of the new global sustainable development agenda, the top United Nations anti-crime official and the head of the global UN–backed treaty on protecting endangered species today urged nations to step up the fight to disrupt criminal networks that supply the disastrous illegal trade.

As cyclonic storm Chapala made landfall this morning in the southwest of Riyan in Yemen with a surface wind speed of 120 to 130 kilometres per hour, United Nations agencies reported that although it had weakened rapidly, the impacts could be severe and challenging.

As policymakers start putting into practice the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by world leaders in September, United Nations officials and Government representatives are meeting to discuss how to continue reducing poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, despite the region’s economic slowdown.

Stateless children across the world share the same feelings of discrimination, frustration and despair, according to a new United Nations report published today, that warns that urgent action is needed before statelessness “sets in stone” problems haunting their childhood.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has mobilized 510,000 dozes of oral cholera vaccine (OCV) to be administered to an estimated 250,000 displaced persons in Iraq, in an effort to curtail the cholera outbreak which is now feared to be spreading to neighbouring countries.

A strong and rare tropical cyclone, named Chapala, is heading towards the southern coasts of Oman and Yemen and is expected to make landfall on the eastern provinces of Hadramout and Shabwa in war-torn Yemen early Tuesday, the United Nations warned today.