UN News Centre

The children of families who were affected by the massive earthquake which devastated large parts of south-west Haiti in August this year are receiving free hot meals at school as part of an initiative by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to support the recovery of the country’s most vulnerable communities.

Nadya Zafira, an international relations student at Indonesia’s Gadjah Mada University, won a writing competition for her letter to UN chief António Guterres, in which she addressed the inequalities laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how indigenous communities and youth are marginalized in global conversations on climate crisis.

Despite COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, some 650,000 women and girls were provided with gender-based violence services through a joint UN and European Union (EU) programme working to stamp out what is arguably one of the most prevalent human rights violations. 

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.  

“Catastrophic and famine-like conditions” hang over Afghanistan’s farmers and herders, whose needs continue to worsen with the onset of winter, UN humanitarians said on Friday. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged countries to keep their promise to leave no one behind and deliver health and sanitation to all. 

For over 70 years, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has had a presence across Afghanistan – even as the Taliban secured power over the summer. 

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. 

Young activists have been swapping inspiring stories at a UN-supported youth summit on Thursday in Geneva about how they’ve driven positive change for their communities and the environment – and how everyone can do the same.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on maritime trade last year was less severe than expected, the knock-on effects will be far reaching and could transform the sector, the UN trade and development body, UNCTAD, said in its latest report, published on Thursday. 

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.  

Even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and other global challenges, children and youth are nearly 50 per cent more likely than older people to believe that the world is becoming a better place, according to the results of a landmark intergenerational poll published on Thursday. 

Despite a crisis of trust both within the country and abroad, three months after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, it is taking halting steps to pursue international legitimacy, a senior UN official in Kabul told the Security Council on Wednesday.

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.

With more than 300,000 women dying from cervical cancer each year, the World Health Organization (WHO) is joining advocates from across the globe on Wednesday to commemorate a Day of Action against the disease. 

Following pandemic-driven school closures, five UN agencies threw their strong support behind an international coalition to improve the nutrition, health and education of school-age children around the world.

Preventing conflicts requires closing development gaps, shrinking inequality and bringing hope to people around the globe, senior UN officials told the Security Council on Tuesday.

At a “critical conference” supporting the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Secretary-General António Guterres outlined on Tuesday, the “essential role” it continues to play in generations of lives.      

A new Iranian law that raises the prospect of the death penalty for abortion has been condemned by independent human rights experts, who have declared that is in “clear contravention of international law”.

Sensitizing public opinion to the question of Palestine, and promoting a peaceful settlement to the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, are among the goals of the 2021 UN International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East, which began on Tuesday.