At a joint press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, UN Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the ongoing talks between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as well as Japan’s renewed initiative of dialogue with the country.
To avert hospital closures and raw sewage overflowing onto the streets of Gaza, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator on Wednesday called on Israeli authorities to allow UN-purchased emergency fuel back across the border of the Palestinian enclave.
It’s essential that Nagasaki’s devastation should “not be forgotten” now or in the future, if the threat of nuclear war is to be lifted, said the Director of the Japanese city’s Atomic Bomb Museum, ahead of a visit there on Thursday by the UN Secretary-General.
Ten years after conflict involving Georgia, Russia and the South Ossetia region broke out, United Nations chief, António Guterres said on Tuesday that “increased commitment” is needed by “relevant actors” to advance the on-going reconciliation and peace process.
The Head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, on Tuesday urged government representatives and business leaders from the Asia-Pacific region to offer more support and protection for over 700,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled violence and discrimination in Myanmar’s Rakhine State over the past year.
As conflicts and natural disasters have sharply deteriorated living conditions in the Horn of Africa and Yemen, more and more people have been crossing the Gulf of Aden in both directions, leading the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to appeal for $45 million to provide critical aid to 81,000 people over three years.
Following the magnitude 7 earthquake which rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok at the weekend, more than 130 aftershocks have been felt with some villages being turned into “ghost towns”, journalists at the UN in Geneva heard on Tuesday.
Governments are being urged to ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples are recognized, whether they are living on their traditional lands or forced to move elsewhere.
Some 117,000 Venezuelans have claimed asylum already this year — more than for the whole of 2017 — the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday, after welcoming a decision by the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court to reverse the closure of the country’s border with its northern neighbour.
Over a year after cholera broke out in Yemen, killing more than 2,000 people, the disease is back and spreading fast in the Houthi-held port city of Hudaydah; a target of continued air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition to regain control of the city.
