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Around one in three countries are not yet implementing remedial programmes to help students catch up on their learning, in the wake of school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, two UN agencies and partners said in a report issued on Tuesday. 

Equitably “redirecting, repurposing or eliminating incentives” that harm biodiversity by at least $500 billion per year is just one of the 21 ambitious targets of a new draft agreement released by a UN body in the lead up to the landmark November climate conference, COP26, in the United Kingdom.

The COVID pandemic has taken four million lives, devastated the global economy, pushed a further 124 million people into extreme poverty and continues to inflict profound suffering – dramatically impacting progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN chief said on Tuesday at a key international forum. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a severe blow to education, shutting down schools for months on end. Now, with vaccines driving down infection rates, students in Lebanon are back in school, but some will not find their way back into the classroom this year.

The COVID-19 Delta variant is travelling around the world at a “scorching pace” driving a new spike in cases and deaths, but it’s exposing a ‘hugely uneven and inequitable’ global gap in vaccine supply, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

“We’re in the midst of a growing two-track pandemic where the haves and have-nots within and between countries are increasingly divergent”, underscored Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus.

Global hunger levels have skyrocketed because of conflict, climate change and the economic impact of COVID-19; and one in five children around the world is stunted, UN agencies warned on Monday. 

Between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020 – some 161 million more than for 2019  –the UN Secretary-General said on Monday; “new, tragic data”, which indicates the world is “tremendously off track” to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. 

Erosion of women’s reproductive rights has been one of the fallouts from the COVID-19 pandemic, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said.

In his message for World Population Day, observed on Sunday, the UN chief called for closing gaps in access to sexual and reproductive health services which the crisis has created.

Grim milestones

The pandemic “continues to upend our world, reaching one grim milestone after another,” said Mr. Guterres. 

Half of the world’s children experience violence on and offline in some form every year, with “devastating and life-long consequences” for their mental health, the UN chief warned a symposium on the issue on Thursday.

The world’s running out of time to limit global temperature rise to below two degrees Celsius, a matter of life or death for climate vulnerable countries on the front line of the crisis, the UN Secretary General reiterated on Thursday.

Speaking to the first Climate Vulnerable Finance Summit of 48 nations systemically exposed to climate related disasters, António Guterres said they needed reassurance that financial and technical support will be forthcoming.