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“Pockets of famine” have now been reported in Southern Madagascar, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

A pivotal pledge to save and restore our planet’s forests was officially announced on the second day of the COP26 World Leaders Summit, and with that deal came a long list of commitments from public and private sector actors to combat climate change, curb biodiversity destruction and hunger, and to protect indigenous peoples’ rights.

Effective action and strong leadership are essential to end child labour by 2025, the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday.

In 2020 alone, according to UN cultural agency UNESCO, which works to protect media workers, 62 journalists were killed just for doing their jobs. Between 2006 and 2020, over 1,200 professionals lost their lives the same way. In nine out of ten cases the killers go unpunished. 

Multiple mediation efforts are underway in Sudan one week after the military seized power, UN Special Representative for the country, Volker Perthes, told journalists in New York on Monday. 

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Monday that the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, and the changing world of work, makes the right to social security for all, “a matter of the utmost urgency.” 

People who use drugs should not be criminalized, the UN agency leading the global fight to stamp out HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) said on Monday, in calling for greater funding for community-led harm reduction programmes.  

As the World Leaders Summit opened on day two of COP26, UN chief António Guterres sent a stark message to the international community. “We are digging our own graves”, he said, referring to the addiction to fossil fuels which threatens to push humanity and the planet, to the brink, through unsustainable global heating.

As the world on Monday passed yet another sombre pandemic milestone – five million lives lost to COVID-19 – Secretary-General António Guterres called on global leaders to back the UN strategy to make vaccine equity a reality by accelerating efforts and ensuring maximum vigilance to defeat the virus.  

The eyes of the world are on Glasgow, Scotland, as the United Nations climate summit known as COP26 opens with UN diplomats and politicians alike calling for more action – and ambition – to set out new commitments for curbing greenhouse emissions and adapting to the impacts of a warming planet.