What's New

UN-Habitat and the Municipality of Beirut (MoB) announced the launch of a newly established Municipal Social Cell (MSC), which aims to mitigate social and protection issues encountered by vulnerable urban host and migrant populations within the city of Beirut.

The fate of tens of thousands of civilians being held in Syria’s “notorious” prisons or detention centres is still unclear, 10 years after the country’s civil war began, UN investigators said on Monday. 

After six consecutive weeks of decline, COVID-19 cases worldwide increased last week for the first time, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. 

Four of the agency’s six regions reported a rise in numbers, with Africa and the Western Pacific excluded. 

COVAX has been trending in stories about the COVID-19 pandemic in recent days, particularly in relation to the shipment of vaccines to Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, the first to arrive in Africa. Here’s a UN News recap of what COVAX is, and why it is so important.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Sunday urged all countries to repatriate and safely reintegrate their young nationals being held at Syria’s largest camp for refugees and internally-displaced, following a deadly weekend fire at Al-Hol camp which saw at least three children die, and another 15 injured.

As the COVID-19 pandemic gathers pace, people worldwide are “being left behind – or pushed even further behind”, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned on Friday. 

Delivering a global update to the Human Rights Council, Michelle Bachelet said people everywhere were being excluded from not only development, but also opportunities.  

The UN Security Council on Friday unanimously passed a resolution calling on all Member States to support a “sustained humanitarian pause” to local conflicts, in order to allow for COVID-19 vaccinations. Briefing journalists afterwards, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus argued that more could be done. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres  received his second COVID-19 vaccine shot at the Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies in the Bronx,  New York, on Friday. 

The Secretary-General has repeatedly called for the vaccines to be "a global public good", accessible to all people, everywhere.

The Secretary-General has extended the mandate of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon from 1 March 2021 for a further period of two years, or until the completion of the cases before the Special Tribunal, if sooner, or the exhaustion of available funds, if sooner.

Syria’s fragile economy has “suffered multiple shocks” over the past 18 months, with its currency plummeting and joblessness swelling as people struggle to cover their basic needs, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator told the Security Council on Thursday.