UN News Centre

A young peace campaigner from Cameroon who turned his back on the violence prevalent in his hometown and became a youth civil society activist, has been telling the United Nations about how he is helping other young people to reject conflict, and take a greater role in building peace in the country.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) raised concern on Wednesday over a new policy by the United States, using public health orders linked to COVID-19, to expel some asylum-seekers and migrants by flying them to southern Mexico.

Israel must safeguard human rights activists in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and within its borders, a UN-appointed expert said on Wednesday. 

More than 4,000 Rohingyas living in Cox’s Bazar refugee camps in Bangladesh have received their first COVID-19 vaccine shots, as part of a national inoculation drive to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Wednesday.  

The World Health Organization (WHO) is supporting Guinea following a confirmed death from Marburg virus disease, the first known case in the country and West Africa, the UN agency reported on Wednesday. 

The urgent need to reduce emissions and slow global heating, should involve the roll-out of more nuclear power stations, regional UN energy experts argued in a new briefing on Wednesday.

Unilateral coercive measures by some governments are denying many people around the world the right to personal development, as well as holding back sustainable national development, four independent UN human rights experts said on Wednesday. 

Practically all peacekeepers and staff have now left the hybrid UN-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), in line with its drawdown plan, a senior UN official told the Security Council on Tuesday. 

While many countries are making progress in the fight against tobacco use, a new World Health Organization (WHO) report shows some are failing to address the problem of emerging nicotine and tobacco products.

A culture of “safety, friends and food” at school has been replaced by “anxiety, violence, and teenage pregnancy”, with remote learning out of reach for millions, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said on Tuesday.

The UN independent expert on the human rights situation in Myanmar on Tuesday called for a “COVID ceasefire” for the country, as infections and deaths soar even as the military junta escalates attacks against healthcare workers. 

At least half a million children under five in drought-afflicted southern Madagascar are on the verge of acute malnourishment, two UN agencies warned on Monday. 

An ancient temple in India and a “cultural landscape” in Spain have become two of the latest sites to be registered on the UN’s prestigious World Heritage List. 

Landmark elections in the Occupied Palestinian territory must be rescheduled soon and include East Jerusalem, three UN independent human rights experts said in a statement on Monday. 

Negotiations began on Monday to approve a UN science report which will anchor high level summits later this year, charged with boosting climate action worldwide.

The world is waking up to the importance of mangroves, a senior UN official said on Monday, underscoring the need for everyone to support restoration and protection of these crucial habitats. 

Inefficient global food production is at the root of a huge rise in hunger as well as one-third of all emissions and 80 per cent of biodiversity loss, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned, in a call to all countries to transform food systems to speed up sustainable development. 

More women and children were killed and wounded in Afghanistan in the first half of 2021 than in the first six months of any year since records began in 2009, a United Nations report revealed on Monday.

“The world urgently needs a clear and unambiguous commitment to the 1.5 degree goal of the Paris Agreement from all G20 nations”, António Guterres said on Sunday after the Group failed to agree on the wording of key climate change commitments during their recent Ministerial Meeting on Environment, Climate and Energy.

A “lack of global solidarity” including the hoarding of vaccines by richer nations as well as slow vaccination rate has contributed to Indonesia becoming the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak in Asia, according to the UN’s top official in the country.