What's New

The Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Lebanon and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) signed an agreement to implement renewable energy solutions to support and reinforce the operations of public facilities in Greater Beirut.

Desperately needed aid operations in Gaza must be protected from attack, the UN’s top aid official has warned, amid reports on Thursday that Palestinians were killed and injured while waiting for supplies in Gaza City.

Six Palestinians are believed to have died in the Gaza City incident and 83 more were wounded as they waited for aid trucks to arrive at Kuwait Roundabout, according to news reports.

The UN Secretary-General on Thursday called for “putting people first” by ending the stigma and discrimination around those who use drugs and the expansion of prevention and treatment programmes.

In a moment marked by both reflection and foresight, Amina Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General, opened the 2024 Arab States Regional Collaborative Platform (RCP) meeting on 5 March in Beirut, Lebanon, highlighting a critical moment in the movement towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the world.

Today on 8 March, International Women’s Day, the United Nations rallies behind the call to “Invest in women: Accelerate progress”, aligned with the priority theme for the upcoming 68th Commission on the Status of Women CSW68

The annual UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meets in March each year to address the widespread inequalities, violence and discrimination women continue to face all around the world.

Here is a brief five-point guide to this high-profile UN event.

1. Pushing for action for eight decades

The work of the Commission began in 1946, days after the UN General Assembly’s inaugural meetings heard former US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and part of the country’s delegation, read an open letter addressed to “the women of the world”.

Marking International Women’s Day, the International Labour Organization Regional Office for Arab States (ILO ROAS) launched a pivotal report on the labour market impact of investing in the care economy in the Middle East and North Africa.

Much more lifesaving humanitarian aid must be allowed into Gaza where one in six children is dangerously malnourished in the north of the war-torn enclave, UN health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.

These are “children who survived bombardment, but may not survive a famine”, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros said on X, formerly Twitter. 

Negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza continued in Egypt for a second day on Monday as the UN’s top rights official warned that the war there risked morphing into a much “wider conflagration” enveloping every country in the Middle East and beyond. 

“I am deeply concerned that in this powder keg, any spark could lead to a much broader conflagration,” Volker Türk told the Human Rights Council, the UN’s top rights forum. 

Spillover risk 

A senior official with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has appealed for wider and safer humanitarian access in Gaza, where malnourished babies are slowly dying while the world watches.

“The child deaths we feared are here,” Adele Khodr, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement issued on Sunday.