This is the News in Brief from the United Nations. 

Ukraine: Top UN aid official appeals for access across contact line 

The UN’s top aid official in Ukraine on Friday issued an urgent appeal for guarantees from Russia and affiliated forces to allow humanitarians to deliver “absolutely necessary” relief items across the contact line. 

Speaking from Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine, where shelling has intensified in the last week, UN Resident Coordinator Denise Brown said that the UN was “constantly negotiating” for access, “up and down” the line that divides those fighting the war in the south and east. 

Mrs. Brown also said that she had no way of confirming what relief items, “if anything” Russia had reportedly sent to non-Government-controlled areas: 

“We have to help people wherever they are and I'm hopeful that the Russian Federation will provide the security guarantees that we require to go across. That's all we want to do. Provide insulin to the hospitals, provide blankets, provide mattresses, fuel if we can, repair windows and doors. It's not complicated.” 

The UN aid coordinator also warned that winter is fast approaching in Ukraine, and that she did not believe that vulnerable communities in the east and south had what they needed to survive. 

Many elderly people were living in damaged houses and the lack of access to gas or electricity in large parts of the east “could be a matter of life or death” if people could not heat their homes, Mrs. Brown said in a statement.  

WMO: Greater Horn of Africa drought forecast to continue for fifth year  

Further indications have emerged that life-threatening drought in the Horn of Africa will likely continue for a fifth year and impact millions of people, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said on Friday. 

The warning came after a long-range forecast for October to December issued at the Greater Horn of Africa Seasonal Climate Outlook Forum, indicated “high chances of drier-than-average conditions across most parts of the region”.  

WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis told journalists in Geneva that in the past, the October to December rainy season usually contributed up to 70 per cent of annual rainfall in equatorial parts of the Horn of Africa, particularly eastern Kenya. 

But this weather models show “with a high degree of confidence” that a fifth consecutive failed rainy season in the Horn of Africa is underway. 

This has contributed to what WMO has called an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe developing in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, which are expected to receive significantly below-normal rainfall totals from now until the end of the year. 

1 in 2 children in Sri Lanka in need of emergency assistance, warns UNICEF  

Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has become so bad that families are now regularly skipping meals and one in two youngsters needs emergency assistance. 

The alert from UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), on Friday, comes as Sri Lanka continues to suffer its worst financial slump since independence in 1948. 

Staple foods have become unaffordable, warned UNICEF’s Regional Director for South Asia, George Laryea-Adjei, who pointed out that severe acute malnutrition in Sri Lanka was among the highest in the region before the current crisis. 

Mounting economic pressure has resulted in increasing abuse, exploitation and violence against children, and an increasing number of impoverished families have had no option but to put their children into institutional care, the UN agency said. 

If the dire economic situation continues, “hard-earned progress for children in Sri Lanka is at risk of being reversed and in some cases, erased permanently,” UNICEF warned.  

Katy Dartford, UN News.