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With the COVID-19 pandemic heightening the dangers of gender-based violence and human trafficking, action on these two fronts is needed now more than ever, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said on Monday. 

Last week saw the first global decline in newly reported cases of COVID-19 since September, the head of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday, advising that the news, while welcome, must be interpreted with “extreme caution”. 

A record 235 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection next year, a near- 40 per cent increase on 2020 which is “almost entirely from COVID-19”, the UN’s emergency relief chief said on Tuesday. 

The United Nations Secretary-General has called for “renewed determination” to eliminate chemical weapons from the world. 

Gaps in life-saving interventions are undermining efforts to curb malaria, amid fears that the coronavirus pandemic could set back the fight against the disease even further, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) has said. 

According to the World Malaria Report, released on Monday, the situation is particularly concerning in high-burden countries in Africa. 

Testing will still be a critical tool against COVID-19, even as vaccines are deployed against the disease, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday during his regular briefing on the crisis. 

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Gheybreyesus emphasized how testing has been common among countries which have worked to control the virus. 

Commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to explore every opening to “restore hope” for a two-State solution. 

In a message, the UN chief cautioned that prospects for a viable two-State solution are becoming “more distant”. 

Countries should adopt ambitious new targets to tackle HIV / AIDS to avoid hundreds of thousands of additional infections and deaths linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN said on Thursday.

In its appeal, the specialised UN agency UNAIDS warned that the pandemic has pushed the world’s AIDS response even further off track, and that 2020 targets are being missed.

It urged countries to learn from the lessons of underinvesting in healthcare and to step up global action to end AIDS and other global health emergencies.

Although much progress has been made in highlighting the pressing issue of violence against women and girls, UN Secretary-General António Guterres is pushing the world to go further towards ending what he has characterized as a blight on all societies. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic precipitating one of the world’s worst health, socioeconomic and humanitarian crises in over a century, the UN chief told a high-level discussion on Tuesday to seize the opportunity “to make real, foundational, and necessary change”. 

“We need global solidarity and coordination”, Secretary-General António Guterres said at the event headlined, ‘Rebirthing the Global Economy to Deliver Sustainable Development for All’.