Families of the more than 130,000 people believed to be detained and forcibly disappeared in Syria, are deeply frustrated by the Security Council’s failure to unite and make progress on the issue, the 15-member organ was told on Thursday.
The General Debate of the General Assembly, traditionally the most high-profile UN event of the year, will be a slimmed-down affair this September, with world leaders staying away from New York, and contributing set-piece speeches via video link, a UN spokesperson confirmed on Thursday.
Now is the time to implement policies and commitments to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the new President of one of the UN’s main bodies said on Thursday.
The immediate introduction of a Temporary Basic Income for the world’s poorest people could slow the current surge in COVID-19 and enable close to three billion people to stay at home, according to a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report released on Thursday.
While all Arab states are facing difficulties in responding to COVID-19, the pandemic can also provide an opportunity to resolve long-standing conflicts and address structural weaknesses across the region, the UN Secretary-General said on Thursday.
With multilateral cooperation under strain, senior UN officials, Nobel laureates and eminent academic experts, gathered virtually on Wednesday for the launch of a new report recommending “an adjusted approach” to economic development, and a policy dialogue exploring how countries can recover from COVID-19, in ways that lead to real structural transformation.
A group of independent UN human rights experts has called for Iran to urgently release an activist who reportedly is ill with COVID-19 symptoms “before it is too late”.
Tanzania should allow peaceful gatherings to take place ahead of elections in October and step back from “draconian” laws, UN-appointed independent rights experts said on Wednesday.
Following the release of a UN study that shows at least 40 million children have missed out on early childhood education due to measures to combat COVID-19, the head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Henrietta Fore, warned that “the pandemic is making a global childcare crisis even worse.”
Cooperation between Israelis and the Palestinians at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic is breaking down, putting human lives at risk as the economy goes into meltdown and the threat of Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank lingers, the UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process says.
