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Mark Lowcock, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator briefs the Security Council.
UN Photo/Loey Felipe

Airstrikes, shelling continue in Syria despite Security Council’s ceasefire call – top UN officials

Despite the Security Council’s demand for a ceasefire throughout Syria, violence continues to plague the war-ravaged country, worsening the humanitarian situation and the suffering of its people, top United Nations political and relief officials said Wednesday, calling on all parties to the conflict to “fulfil their obligations to end the fighting.”

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Yemen, briefs the Security Council.
UN Photo/Loey Felipe

UN can help, but Yemen’s warring parties must make concessions, commit to peace – outgoing UN envoy

A destructive pattern of zero-sum politics has plunged Yemen into ever deeper poverty and desolation, the United Nations envoy for the war-torn country said Tuesday, emphasizing that while the UN and the wider international community can try to bring about a favourable environment for a path to peace, Yemeni decision-makers must stop the fighting and bloodshed.

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Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the High-Level Segment of the 37th Session of the UN Human Rights Council.
UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

‘Hell on earth’ in Syria’s eastern Ghouta must end – UN chief Guterres

Syria’s war-battered east Ghouta, the troubled Kasais region in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Northern Rakhine state in Myanmar, where violence has sparked a major exodus of Muslim Rohingyas, were all in the spotlight as the Geneva-based Human Rights Council opened its session today, with UN officials warning that these situations spiraled into crisis “because not enough was done, early and collectively, to prevent the rising horrors.”

A mother giving sorghum porridge to her children. A growing number of children in South Sudan’s Northern Bahr el Ghazal and Warrap have only one meal per day.
FAO/Stefanie Glinski

South Sudan: A year after averting famine, ‘food insecurity outlook has never been so dire,’ UN warns

One year after famine was declared in parts of South Sudan, three United Nations agencies warned on Monday that without sustained humanitarian assistance and access, more than seven million people in the crisis-torn country– almost two-thirds of the population – could become severely food insecure in the coming months.

A three-year-old Rohingya refugee stands against the bamboo frame of the shelter her family is constructing in Balukhali makeshift settlement, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
UNICEF/Nybo

Fresh threats loom over 720,000 Rohingya children ‘cast adrift, trapped in limbo’ – UNICEF

Rohingya children are facing threats either from severe weather approaching Bangladesh where hundreds of thousands are sheltered in squalid, overcrowded refugee camps, or by ongoing violence in their Myanmar homeland,  the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Friday, calling urgently for scaled-up assistance ahead of the region’s storm season and to address the root causes of the crisis.

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Ru’a, 18 months, rides on her grandfather’s motorbike as he drags it across Mesraba in East Ghouta, Syria.
UNICEF/2018/Amer Almohibany

‘You can still save lives’; UN aid chief urges Security Council action to halt violence in Syria’s war-battered east Ghouta

The United Nations humanitarian chief on Thursday called for action by the Security Council to halt the appalling destruction of Syria’s eastern Ghouta, where nearly 300 people have reportedly been killed in just the past few days, as “bombs and mortars have rained down on bakeries and medical facilities.”