What's New

The number of new COVID-19 cases reported to the UN health agency has declined for seven weeks in a row, in what the top official there called on Monday “the longest sequence of weekly declines during the pandemic so far”.

However, while weekly cases are at their lowest since February, “deaths are not falling as quickly”, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), told journalists in Geneva. 

Some two billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been distributed globally but only 0.5 per cent have reached low-income countries where frontline health workers and the elderly have yet to receive a shot, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

Amidst the triple environmental threat of biodiversity loss, climate disruption and escalating pollution, Secretary-General António Guterres launched “an unprecedented effort to heal the Earth”, on the eve of World Environment Day. 

Kicking off the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, he said the planet was rapidly reaching a “point of no return”, cutting down forests, polluting rivers and oceans, and ploughing grasslands “into oblivion”. 

Upholding human rights online must be part of global efforts to recover better following the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of UN independent experts said on Friday. 

They stressed that “digital rights” must be a top priority as countries rebuild civic space both during and after the crisis. 

Heads of Government, religious leaders, activists and artists joined the United Nations on Friday in a rallying cry to heal the planet, launching the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. 

It calls for stepping up efforts to prevent, halt and reverse degradation of areas such as grasslands, forests, oceans and mountains, essential to all life on Earth. 

The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has called for “clear and unequivocal guarantees” over the safety and security of staff working to restore critical services in Gaza, following last month’s conflict between Israel and militant group Hamas, which controls the occupied enclave.

The effects of corruption are “detrimental to all of society”, the President of the UN General Assembly said on Wednesday during the first day of a special session convened to galvanize political will to fight the scourge.  

Senior UN health agency officials on Wednesday called for unhindered humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, citing growing concerns about urgent health needs there. 

Ms. Joanna Wronecka, the newly appointed UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, arrived today in Beirut to take up her new position. Ms. Wronecka will serve as the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General in Lebanon and Head of Mission of the United Nations Office of the Special Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL).

Governments are being urged to finance a new $50 billion roadmap to end the COVID-19 pandemic and drive a fast recovery, announced on Tuesday by the heads of the world’s predominant global financing, health and trade agencies.