UN News Centre - Africa

Underscoring the importance of fully involving the young in decisions affecting their lives, three United Nations agencies announced an innovative partnership on Tuesday with African local governments, designed to inject youthful ideas and energy into urban planning policies.

Amidst an increase in criminal activity in the Abyei area, which is contested by Sudan and South Sudan, the United Nations top peacekeeping official on Thursday called for deployment of additional police units, to enhance the UN’s focus on maintaining law and order there, and furthering peace between local communities.  

The South Sudanese soldier who shot and wounded a UN peacekeeper on Saturday is facing a court martial, said David Shearer, head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), during a press conference in the capital, Juba.

Warring parties in South Sudan must demonstrate their willingness to a peaceful end to their conflict by “making their guns fall silent. Immediately and everywhere,” said Nicholas Haysom, outgoing UN Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, on Tuesday.

The peace agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia has raised hopes that improving human rights will be front and centre on Eritrea’s path forward, according to a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Tuesday.

Despite improvements for persons with Albinism in Kenya who have historically suffered attacks and discrimination, a United Nations expert has signaled that “much remains to be done”, especially when it comes to accessing equal treatment under the law.

The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, has welcomed the meeting between the Presidents of Djibouti and Eritrea, held on Monday in Saudi Arabia, as “yet another step in the consolidation of recent peace and security gains in the Horn of Africa region”.

The UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Edward Kallon, condemned on Monday the killing of an aid worker who had been held captive by a non-state armed group in north-east Nigeria since  March.

The plight of South Sudan’s women and girls “should no longer be ignored”, UN investigators told the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, citing the disturbing testimonies of sexual abuse victims who have been treated by soldiers and militias as the “spoils” of the more than five-year conflict.

There is a powerful wind of hope blowing across the Horn of Africa region, said UN chief António Guterres on Sunday, in Saudi Arabia to witness the signing of a peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, ending decades of simmering conflict.

A “lack of command and control” on the part of South Sudan’s government, just days after signing a new peace agreement to end years of brutal civil conflict, is one of the factors which led to the shooting of a United Nations peacekeeper on Saturday, the UN mission chief in the country has said.

The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has strongly condemned Monday’s attack on the National Oil Company (NOC) headquarters in Tripoli.

The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, has called on Libyan authorities to take action against  criminals targeting desperate refugees and migrants, amid reports that smugglers and traffickers in the country are impersonating Agency staff.

Perpetrators behind the killing of a number of people displaced by conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR) must be brought to justice, the UN peacekeeping operation in the country said on Friday.

Virginia Gamba, the United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, on Friday called for much greater accountability and effort, to prevent grave violations against children across the world’s youngest nation, South Sudan.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has applauded the verdict by a military court on Thursday, that found ten government soldiers guilty of murder, rape and other crimes against civilians and journalists at a hotel in the capital Juba, just over two years ago.

The status quo in Libya is “untenable,” Ghassan Salamé, Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) told the Security Council on Wednesday.

The top United Nations representative in Malawi is urging the Government to promptly prosecute those allegedly responsible for the death of a young man with albinism whose butchered body was found earlier this year.

A United Nations-backed humanitarian conference to raise much needed resources for relief, development and peacebuilding programmes in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin concluded on Tuesday, raising some $2.17 billion in support and about $467 million in concessional loans for the crisis-ridden region.

Nearly 3,500 people displaced by violence in South Sudan have been relocated from a UN-run camp in the capital, Juba, to temporary housing, the organization’s mission in the country, UNMISS, reported on Tuesday.