UN News Centre - Africa

An Ethiopian  Airlines flight crashed shortly after take off from the capital Addis Ababa on Sunday, killing more than 150 people on board. The UN  Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement that he was “deeply saddened at the tragic loss of lives” , as reports emerged that UN staff were also among the dead.

Amidst a deadly Ebola outbreak, on Saturday morning armed militia members brutally attacked an Ebola clinic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) eastern city of Butembo, prompting a call from the UN's global health agency chief “to protect the treatment centres”.

After months of preparation by hundreds of national and international officials, including the United Nations, around 760,000 registered voters from Guinea-Bissau headed to the polls on Sunday to choose new members of the National Assembly.  

September’s UN-backed South Sudan peace agreement is holding and has led to positive change, but tens of thousands of civilians in the war-weary nation are still reliant of life-saving humanitarian assistance, and time is running out. This was the message that David Shearer, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for South Sudan, relayed to the Security Council on Friday.

The landlocked West African country of Burkina Faso is facing “unprecedented” displacement, triggered by armed groups and intercommunal clashes, and exacerbated by long-term food insecurity, UN aid officials said on Tuesday.

In a statement released on Tuesday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, announced her regret at the closure of the UN Human Rights Office in Burundi – which was set up more than two decades ago – at the insistence of the country’s government.

The Secretary-General António Guterres said on Friday that he “strongly condemns the deadly terrorist attacks” that took place in the Somali capital Mogadishu late on Thursday local time, which reportedly killed more than 20 people, with scores injured.

An agreement by Libya’s Prime Minister and a key rival military leader to improve political stability across the country through new general elections, has been welcomed by the UN Secretary-General.

The land is sandy, dry and scorched by the searing sun of the African Sahel, but that has not stopped the planting of some 50,000 trees at a camp for Nigerian refugees in the far north-east corner of Cameroon.

Worsening security in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo marked by attacks on Ebola clinics have made it a “given” that the deadly virus will spread further, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

A teacher holds up a drawing of an adolescent girl who has just been caught unawares by her first menstruation cycle, while at school. She’s addressing neat rows of young women sitting in class, in the town of Bol, in Chad.

With rising sea levels due to climate change already affecting coastal communities in Liberia, there are fears that densely populated parts of the capital Monrovia could be submerged, unless action is taken.

Increasing hostilities in the oil-rich city of Derna are becoming an increasing source of concern said the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Libya on Friday, following an intensification in fighting which has resulted in “substantial civilian casualties”.

With millions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) demonstrating “their commitment to the political process”, the days ahead are “critical” to what has been an “historic election process”, the top UN official in the country told the Security Council on Friday.

The agreement by the Government and armed groups in the Central African Republic to hold talks later this month (CAR) is “an important step to resolve the country’s crisis”, said the UN peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, on Thursday.

A rising number of attacks by extremist groups, using more sophisticated tactics, risk undermining progress in West Africa and the Sahel, the region’s UN envoy told the Security Council on Thursday.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appealed for all parties to “refrain from violence” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), following the announcement of the provisional results of the long-delayed presidential election.

Following an upsurge in violence in north-east Nigeria, which was brought to global attention five years ago with the abduction by Boko Haram extremists of the Chibok schoolgirls, tens of thousands of innocent civilians continue to flee, prompting “grave concern” from the United Nations envoy there.

The UN’s Deputy Special Representative for Somalia, on Wednesday congratulated the newly-elected president of Puntland, Somalia’s semi-autonomous region in the country’s north east.

Despite a precarious security environment and continuing pockets of mistrust on the part of affected populations, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Tuesday that all Ebola-affected areas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu Province are now accessible to health workers.