A “toxic flood of electric and electronic waste” that is growing by the day across the world, should be urgently converted into a source of decent work, that can also protect populations from its harmful effects, the United Nations labour agency said on Wednesday.
“Uneven growth, rising debt levels, possible upticks in financial volatility, and heightened global trade tensions” are hampering progress on reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN chief António Guterres told the Forum on Financing for Development on Monday, during what he called “a critical moment” to “accelerate action for sustainable development”.
A plan to withdraw forces from front lines in and around the key Yemeni port of Hudaydah has been accepted by pro-Government forces and Houthi rebels, the UN Special Envoy to the country told the Security Council on Monday, warning however that war shows “no sign of abating” elsewhere.
“Miraculously I had no machete marks” a survivor of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda told a solemn United Nations event in New York on Friday, 25 years on, to remember the systematic killing of more than one million people, over less than three months.
Speaking to reporters outside the Security Council in New York on Wednesday night, UN chief António Guterres said there was still time for a “bloody battle for Tripoli” to be avoided, despite the continuing fighting in and around the Libyan capital.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has been “a trusted voice” to “ensure social justice in every corner of our world”, Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday, at a high-level meeting to commemorate the centenary of what was the first ever United Nations agency.
Over a month after two competing resolutions on Venezuela failed to pass, the UN Security Council met on Wednesday to discuss the “very real humanitarian problem” facing the country, where close to seven million people are in dire need of aid, and some 5,000 people continue to flee across borders every day.
More than four in 10 women in 51 countries surveyed, feel they have no choice but to agree to their partner’s sexual demands, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, said on Wednesday, noting that they are also unable to make basic decisions about getting pregnant and accessing health care for themselves.
The outlook for global growth is at its lowest since the financial crisis, but expected to pick up in the second half of 2019, the International Monetary Fund reported on Tuesday, so long as “policy missteps that could harm economic activity” are avoided.
Young people require “skills, values, jobs and livelihoods that empower them” so they can help forge a more sustainable world, the President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) said on Monday, kicking off its eighth Annual Youth Forum.
