This is the News in Brief from the United Nations. 

Gaza City: Babies dying in hospital amid scenes of devastation and despair 

More patients, including premature babies, have reportedly died in Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital which has gone three days without electricity amid intensifying Israeli military operations, making a ceasefire more urgent than ever, UN humanitarians said on Monday.

The UN’s health agency WHO reported that according to the Gaza health authorities, 37 premature babies at the hospital were relocated over the weekend to an operating room without their incubators.

According to the latest media reports, six babies at Al-Shifa have died.

“The world cannot stand silent while hospitals, which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation and despair,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reiterating calls for an immediate halt to the fighting.

Al-Shifa is the epicentre of armed clashes in Gaza City following claims by the Israeli military that Hamas has built a command centre under the hospital. The claims have been denied by medical professionals working there.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said that “the disregard for the protection of civilian infrastructure including UN facilities, hospitals, schools, shelters and places of worship [was] testament to the level of horror that civilians in Gaza are living every day”.

East Africa: grim outlook for millions going hungry, warns WFP 

In East Africa, conflict, high food prices and climate shocks continue to leave millions of people not knowing where their next meal will come from, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Monday. 

The agency said that as of the end of September 62.6 million in the region were food insecure, with Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan among the “most severe” global food crises. 

All four countries have been experiencing either open conflict or heightened violence, pushing people to flee their homes. Over 18 million people in the region are displaced – including12 million within their countries and five million who have crossed international borders.

High costs of food and of living persist in East Africa with inflation averaging 13.2 per cent.

WFP said that while official inflation rates for war-torn Sudan have not been issued since February, “they are expected to exceed 300 per cent by the end of the year”.

The UN agency stressed that the dire situation is likely to continue through early 2024.

The El Niño climate pattern is expected to bring above-normal rainfall through January, which can be a boon for farming; however, WFP warned that severe flooding in low-lying areas of Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda may threaten crops and livestock, drive further displacement and fuel infectious disease outbreaks.

Iraq: UN migration agency welcomes new Yazidi Genocide Memorial 

In Iraq, the UN migration agency IOM has hailed a new memorial in Sinjar province at a site where scores of Yazidi women were killed by terror group ISIL in 2014 as a “first step towards recovery”.

Built at the request of survivors by Nadia’s Initiative - an organization spearheaded by survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad, together with IOM - the memorial pays homage to the resilience and courage of the Yazidis.

Over 3,000 were executed and buried in mass graves by ISIL, also known as Daesh, in what the UN has declared a genocide.

Ms. Murad, whose own mother was killed at the site, had donated part of her prize to purchase the land that the memorial stands on.

IOM’s chief of mission in Iraq, Giorgi Gigauri, said that a crucial part of the recovery process was timely individual reparations and other transitional justice measures as outlined in the “Yazidi Survivors Law” adopted by the Iraqi parliament in 2021.

The UN agency worked closely with the Iraqi authorities to develop the law and has been supporting the application process for reparations. Over 1,140 applications have already been processed and nearly 900 verified survivors have begun receiving monthly salaries under the legislation. 

Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer, UN News.