UN News Centre - Africa

Ongoing violence in Cameroon’s northwest and southwest has created a fast-growing humanitarian emergency now affecting some 1.9 million people, a “15-fold increase since 2017”, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.

The road ahead “will not be easy” for the Horn of Africa, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said on Monday, briefing the Security Council on her Joint Solidarity Mission with the African Union (AU) at the end of October. 

The UN migration agency appealed on Friday for the immediate liberation of a volunteer and child who’ve been missing since a gun battle in South Sudan at the weekend that claimed the lives of three agency workers.

The Security Council highlighted the growing partnership on matters of peace and security between the United Nations and African Union (AU) on Wednesday amidst calls to bolster overall effectiveness.

Protecting marine areas from over-exploitation and providing the people who have traditionally lived off the sea with a sustainable alternative livelihood does not come cheap, but in the Seychelles, a focus on financial instruments is making that task easier. 

Updating the Security Council on the situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Friday, the head of the UN Mission in the country, MINUSCA, called on the country’s friends and partners, including the Council, to “transform the dreams of peace, prosperity and development of millions of Central Africans into a lasting reality”.

Sudan and neighbouring South Sudan “have never been closer” to reaching a sustainable peace with each other, and their own internal armed opposition groups, the head of UN peacekeeping told the Security Council on Thursday.

Somalia has made “enormous strides on its path to peace and stability”, and Somali women’s participation in peace and security efforts has “helped advance society towards an inclusive and peaceful future”, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said on Wednesday.

In a visit to South Sudan this past weekend, members of the UN Security Council urged leaders to expedite implementation of a 2018 peace agreement aimed at ending six years of ongoing conflict.

Authorities in Egypt are being urged by the UN human rights office, OHCHR,  to immediately release scores of citizens who have been arrested in connection with recent anti-government demonstrations in several cities.

Despite major political developments at a national level, which have led to the establishment of a civilian-led government, the security situation in the Darfur region of Sudan remains unstable, UN peace chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix briefed the Security Council on Thursday.

UN chief António Guterres has strongly condemned Friday’s attack on a mosque in northern Burkina Faso, in a statement released on Saturday.

The second worst Ebola outbreak of all time, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was officially declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on Wednesday, with the head of the World Health Organization calling for countries to ‘take notice and redouble our efforts”.

Ahead of a key expert meeting convened by the United Nations to decide whether to declare the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) an international health emergency, the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF warned that the epidemic “is infecting more children” than earlier outbreaks.  

Deadly, attacks on health workers in Ebola-hit areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including one at the weekend that left two dead, are an indication that combating the disease outbreak will require far greater international support, UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said on Monday. 

Access to education in Somaliland is extremely limited, with more than 50 per cent of children in Somaliland out of school. In an effort to address the problem, the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, has partnered with the government, and the global fund Education Cannot Wait, to launch a programme designed to help children affected by ongoing crises in the country.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned the terrorist attack that took place on July 12 in southern Somalia. 

Determined children learning in classes without roofs, resilient women farming without tools or much land, and grateful people who survived a cyclone that destroyed their livelihoods; on his final day in Mozambique, UN chief António Guterres witnessed first-hand the inner strength and resilience of the storm-ravaged country's people.

“As a priority, we ask that 5,600 refugees and migrants currently held in centres across Libya be freed in an orderly manner and their protection guaranteed” the UN refugee and migrants chiefs said in a joint statement, released on Friday.

Arriving in Mozambique to express solidarity and see for himself the damage wrought by two back-to-back cyclones earlier this year, UN chief António Guterres on Thursday said “undeniable moral authority” lay with its people, who had borne the brunt of a disaster linked inexorably to climate change, and a warming world.