UN News Centre

As desperate Afghans were trying to escape the Taliban and board planes, during chaotic scenes at Kabul airport on Monday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for international unity on Afghanistan, in a briefing to an emergency session of the Security Council. 

As Haiti struggles to recover from the devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake that hit over the weekend, killing some 1,300 people, the UN is warning that many people are likely to be affected by Tropical Depression Grace, a storm which is expected to bring torrential rain, flooding and mudslides between Monday and Tuesday.

Some 30,000 Palestine refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in south Syria have become increasingly vulnerable, following recent clashes in and around the Dera’a Governorate, the UN agency warned on Sunday.

As the crisis in Afghanistan deepens by the hour, with reports that insurgent forces reached the country’s capital, Kabul, earlier on Sunday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged the Taliban and all other parties “to exercise utmost restraint to protect lives and ensure that humanitarian needs can be addressed.”

A community-led project to manage some 28,000 tonnes of plastic waste and prevent 5,000 tonnes from ending up in the ocean is being supported by the UN in one of the most popular tourist attractions in Viet Nam.

“Social responsibility and sustainable profit” can go hand in hand according to the chief of Thailand’s government pension fund. The UN, and some of the biggest players in the Thai economy, are working together to support efforts by the country’s finance and banking institutions to speed up the South East Asian country’s transition to a net zero carbon economy.

The United Nations is working to support rescue and relief efforts in Haiti following a powerful earthquake that reportedly left hundreds dead, with perhaps even more injured and missing, and caused massive damage in the south-western part of the country.

UN Human Rights Council-appointed experts expressed deep concern on Friday over Israeli military interference in the work of a well-known, independent Palestinian child rights organization, in the occupied West Bank.

The UN Secretary-General on Friday called on Taliban militants to “immediately halt” their offensive against Government forces and return to the negotiating table in good faith, “in the interest of Afghanistan, and its people.”

Expressing alarm over “rampant police brutality against peaceful protesters worldwide”, more than 40 UN-appointed human rights experts on Friday called for an end to the violence, urging Governments to promote dialogue, tolerance and diversity. 

Rival armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are carrying out horrific sexual attacks against women and girls, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warned on Friday.

Nearly 30,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa are believed to have died from cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO). 

Afghanistan is on course to witness its highest ever number of documented civilian casualties in a single year since records began, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged all countries “to put differences aside” in order to speed up efforts to understand where and how the COVID-19 virus started – including the unproven suggestion that it was manufactured in a laboratory.

With Taliban fighters continuing to gain ground in Afghanistan, the UN Secretary-General is following events “with deep concern” said the UN Spokesperson on Thursday, including the battle for Herat and Kandahar, the country’s second and third largest cities.  

Political strides are breathing new hope into the country’s fragile State-building process, driven by an electoral agreement signed by Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble, and the heads of Somalia’s federal member states, a senior UN official told the Security Council on Thursday.

With 40 per cent of the global population under 25, the international community has a special responsibility to ensure young people can share their perspectives and concerns about existential threats to current and future generations, UN disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu said on Thursday.

Young people are on the “frontlines of the struggle to build a better future”, the UN chief said on Thursday, International Youth Day.

A group of UN-appointed experts on Thursday called for a moratorium on the sale of surveillance technology, warning against the danger of allowing the sector to operate as “a human rights-free zone.” 

UN weather experts said on Thursday that they’re “actively looking” into a possible record temperature for Continental Europe of 48.8 Celsius (119.8 Fahrenheit) near the town of Syracuse in Sicily, amid devastating wildfires in Mediterranean countries and Russia.