This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Ethiopia still in grip of spreading violence, hate speech and aid crisis

UN-appointed rights investigators announced on Thursday that they’ve launched a probe into an alleged massacre of at least 200 people in Ethiopia’s Oromia region.

Kaari Betty Murungi, chair of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, was speaking on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The Commission had received reports last week of the killings in Western Oromia, as it continued its work investigating rights abuses linked to conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, that flared in November 2020.

Despite many other conflicts around the world, Ms. Murungi said that the world must not ignore what was happening in Ethiopia:

“The ongoing spread of violence, fuelled by hate speech and incitement to ethnic-based and gender-based violence, are early-warning indicators of further atrocity crimes against innocent civilians, especially women and children who are more vulnerable. The expanding conflict makes worse the existing humanitarian crisis that is being experienced in Ethiopia and the region.”

Four months after Russian invasion Ukraine’s needs are still massive

Across Ukraine, the scale of needs caused by Russia's invasion is still massive and human rights concerns persist, UN humanitarians said in an update on the conflict on Thursday.

They also repeated calls for access to the country's Black Sea ports to export vitally needed cereals.

Speaking from Kyiv, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine, Osnat Lubrani, said that some 16 million people in Ukraine had multiple needs: water, food, health services, shelter and protection.

Since 24 February, when the war began, the UN and humanitarian partners have delivered lifesaving assistance to nearly nine million people in every single region of Ukraine.

But Ms. Lubrani said that despite these successes, aid access is still too dangerous in many places:

“We could not deliver relief supplies or access Kherson. We could not deliver relief supplies or access Mariupol. We could not support any sort of assistance, have not even managed to have the parties to agree on safe passages to evacuate people from Sievierodonetsk, so they could move in the direction of their choice.”

Africa Monkeypox diagnostics boost

The spread of Monkeypox to African countries where it has never been detected before is a “worrying sign” but measures are being put in place to bolster national efforts to diagnose and treat the disease, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, said that surveillance and laboratory diagnosis in affected countries were “cornerstones” of disease control, before urging greater support to expand genomic sequencing technology that was been introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, although all African countries can test for monkeypox using polymerase chain reaction machines, many lack the reagents needed to do so on a bigger scale.

To help, WHO wants to secure 60,000 tests for Africa, with around 2,000 tests and reagents to be shipped to high-risk countries, and 1,000 to those at lower risk.

According to latest Monkepox sequencing data, “there is no recent linkage” between the virus that is circulating in Europe and Africa, WHO said.

Outside the six countries in Africa with a history of human transmission, the virus has also been reported in three countries which have never had any human cases.

These are Ghana, Morocco and South Africa, which has confirmed the disease in two patients with no travel history, which suggests that there is a high possibility of local transmission.

Elections, last hurdle in way of agreement between Libya’s opposing sides

In Geneva, despite “unprecedented consensus” between Libya’s opposing sides, they have been unable to reach a deal on Presidential elections, it’s been announced.

In a statement on Thursday, veteran UN negotiator Stephanie Williams said that the presidents of Libya’s House of Representatives and its High Council of State, had overcome numerous sticking points, such as the division of responsibilities between the president, prime minister, cabinet and local government.

But “disagreement persists” on eligibility requirements for the candidates of the country’s first presidential elections, Ms. Williams said.

And she noted that although the “progress secured during three rounds of consultations in Cairo” and in Geneva this week was significant, “it remains insufficient …to move forward towards comprehensive national elections, which is a genuine desire of the Libyan people”.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.