What's New

When he accepted the offer to become UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, four years ago, Mark Lowcock had hoped the need for aid globally was on the decline. 

But due to protracted and emerging conflicts, the rising impacts of climate change, and the toll of diseases such as Ebola - and now of course COVID-19 - the number of people requiring assistance and protection reached unprecedented levels over this period. 

Domestic workers globally have been among the hardest hit by the COVID crisis, losing more jobs and working hours than other sectors, the UN labour agency ILO 

As Lebanon endures one of its worst financial and economic crises ever, the UN estimates that over the next eight months around $300 million is needed to provide vital aid to around 1.5 million Lebanese and 400,000 migrant workers living there.

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.