This is the News in Brief from the United Nations. 

COP28: UN chief warns that world is on course for ‘climate collapse’

2023 is due to be the hottest year in human history and the world is on course for “climate collapse in real time”, UN chief António Guterres said on Thursday.

In a video message to the COP28 summit in Dubai, the UN Secretary-General issued an urgent appeal to governments to get us out of “deep trouble”.

The UN Secretary-General’s comments follow recent visits to two global warming hotspots, Antarctica and Nepal, where he expressed his shock at the speed of receding glaciers.

Latest climate data just published by the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) indicate that the maximum Antarctic Sea ice extent for the year was a staggering one million square kilometres less than the previous record low.

Concentrations in the atmosphere of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide also reached a record high last year and continued to increase in 2023, the UN agency said.   

Israel-Palestine crisis: New pause in fighting offers extended relief window

A last-minute extension of the pause in fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas on Thursday offered hope that UN humanitarians and aid partners will be able to pursue their efforts to reach the enclave’s most vulnerable people.

The latest update from UN aid coordination office OCHA indicated that two hospitals in Gaza City, Al Ahli and As Sahaba, had received a total of 10,500 litres of fuel, which is enough to operate their generators for about seven days.

But humanitarians have warned that despite the pause in fighting, much more aid is needed, urgently. 

They also warned that has been almost no improvement in access to clean water for residents in northern Gaza, after most of the main water production facilities shut down through lack of fuel, or damage from Israeli airstrikes launched after Hamas’s 7 October terror attacks that killed 1,200 and took another 240 hostage. 

End ‘repugnant’ chemical weapons use once and for all, says UN chief

The 30^th of November marks the day of Remembrance for All Victims of Chemical Warfare – it’s also a day when UN Secretary-General António Guterres insisted that we should resolve to end the use of these repugnant weapons, once and  for all.

In a social media post on X, the UN chief said that “in the name and memory of all who have suffered, let’s consign chemical weapons to history”.

International efforts to eradicate the illegal munitions are led by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The body meets in the Hague to discuss progress in chemical weapons disarmament which emerged as an issue more than a century ago, during the First World War, when chemical weapons such as mustard gas were used on a massive scale, resulting in more than 100,000 fatalities and a million casualties.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.