What's New

A new report on pandemics and cities from UN-Habitat, points the way to how hard-hit urban centres can reduce the impact of future outbreaks and become more equitable, healthy and environmentally friendly.

‘Cities and Pandemics: Towards a more just, green and healthy future’, launched on Tuesday, describes how urban areas have been at the forefront of the COVID-19 crisis. 

Now is not the moment to reduce humanitarian aid to Syria, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator told the Security Council on Monday, stressing that after 10 years of conflict, more support was needed to avoid further “dramatic and widespread” deterioration. 

Over seven months have passed since the Beirut blast and many buildings, public spaces and infrastructure remain in need of structural repair. UN-Habitat, through funding of over USD 2 million from the Government of Japan, will help improve already deteriorated living conditions of vulnerable population groups living in Beirut’s Gemmayzeh, Mar Mikhael and Karantina neighbourhoods starting 31 March 2021 for one year.

Though significant steps have been taken to prevent debt crises across the world sparked by the COVID-19 crisis, they have not been sufficient to restore economic stability in many developing countries, according to a policy brief issued by the UN Secretary-General on Monday. 

Achieving equal rights for women is “the unfinished human rights struggle of this century”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in remarks to the Generation Equality Forum which began online from Mexico City on Monday. 

A new study released on Friday by the UN cultural agency, reveals that more than 100 million more children than expected, are falling behind the minimum proficiency level in reading, due to COVID-related school closures.  

Senior United Nations officials have called on the international community to set up funding for relief programmes supporting millions of people in Syria and the region, who depend on the life-saving assistance and livelihood support after a decade of brutal conflict. 

“COVAX works” the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, informing journalists that the UN-backed vaccine initiative has distributed more than 32 million vaccines to 61 countries in just one month.  

At the beginning of the year, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had called for countries to work together, so that all States could begin vaccinating within the first 100 days of 2021. 

At the closing of the UN women’s commission, world leaders issued a strong pledge for the elimination of violence against women along with their full and effective participation in public life, including in decision-making. 

At a workshop providing psychological support to victims of terrorism, Narin (not her real name) pictured herself as a body without a face. “I was abducted by ISIL at the age of 17 and was sold and raped by a dozen men”, she says. “To this day, I still do not know what the fate of my abducted mother is, I still don’t know if she is dead or alive”, she adds.