UN News Centre - Africa

Experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council have called for urgent action to end violence against women and girls caught in the Tigray conflict in northern Ethiopia. 

Over 700,000 children have been impacted by school closures due to often brutal violence in Cameroon, according to an analysis released by the UN humanitarian arm, OCHA, on Thursday. 

Concluding a four-day to visit Burkina Faso, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Wednesday that the country faces “a multitude of challenges with severe impacts on a wide range of human rights of its people”.

For two decades, the African Union (AU) has been “a gold standard of regional co-operation”, Secretary-General António Guterres told the fifth UN-AU Annual Conference on Wednesday in New York.

The UN refugee Agency, UNHCR, is “appalled by a series of deadly attacks” on displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the agency’s spokesperson told journalists on Tuesday in Geneva.

Eddie Ndopu, an award-winning disability activist from South Africa, and one of 17 United Nations advocates for the Sustainable Development Goals, lives with spinal muscular atrophy, and faces many difficulty daily challenges. Ahead of International Day of Persons with Disabilities, on 3 December, Mr. Ndopu discusses how he has overcome barriers to travel the world advocating for others with disabilities.

The number of people in need of humanitarian food assistance across northern Ethiopia has spiked as a direct result of ongoing conflict, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday. 

The latest COVID-19 variant identified in South Africa has been given the Greek name 'Omicron', and labeled as a variant of concern by UN health agency experts due to its large number of mutations and possible faster rate of infection.   

With the dire humanitarian situation in Tigray, Ethiopia, continuing to deteriorate, it is critical to establish a regular flow of humanitarian aid into the region, the Deputy Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General said on Wednesday. 

With one month left until elections in Libya, it is important that the international community remains united in support of the process, UN Special Envoy Ján Kubiš told the Security Council on Wednesday. 

With about 2.3 million people already suffering with serious water, food and pasture shortages in Somalia, a rapidly worsening drought could lead to an “extreme situation” by April next year.  

The international community must step up support to Madagascar, where more than one million people in the south are facing severe hunger, the top UN aid official there said on Thursday in a renewed appeal for solidarity and funding. 

At least 39 people have been killed by security forces in Sudan since the 25 October military coup, 15 of whom were reportedly shot dead on Wednesday, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.  

Although progress has been made in Somalia’s electoral process, it has been slow and uneven, the UN Special Representative for the country said in a briefing to the Security Council on Wednesday.

Over the past week, mass arrests of people reportedly of Tigrayan origin have continued in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and elsewhere, the UN rights office said on Tuesday. 

Children in the Central African Republic (CAR) have suffered a spike in grave violations since the end of 2020, according to a new UN report on the situation in the country, issued on Monday. 

As the humanitarian crisis grows in Ethiopia’s conflict-affected north, the UN announced on Monday that $40 million in funds have been made available to scale up emergency operations. 

Even amid the dire humanitarian crisis in the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, health workers continue to deliver safe, lifesaving care to mothers-to-be, with assistance from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged Libyans to forge a spirt of national unity and overcome any remaining differences ahead of landmark presidential and parliamentary elections next month. 

UN agencies raised the alarm on Wednesday over the growing food crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), calling for an urgent scaling-up of assistance.