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More than a human rights violation against an individual, enforced disappearances have frequently been used as a strategy to spread terror within the whole of society, the United Nations said on Sunday, the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearance.

To support the rehabilitation of schools, historic heritage buildings, museums and the creative economy, which suffered extensive damage in the deadly explosions that shook Beirut earlier this month, the head of the UN cultural agency on Thursday launched an international fund-raising appeal.

The devastating blasts rocked the Lebanese capital and wreaked havoc throughout the city, killing close to 200 people, injuring thousands of others, and leaving around a quarter of a million homeless. 

COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on health services in Syria, where limited testing is obscuring the real extent of the pandemic, the UN’s Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator said on Thursday.

“Reports of healthcare facilities filling up, of rising numbers of death notices and burials, all seem to indicate that actual cases far exceed official figures,” Ramesh Rajasingham told the UN Security Council.

For at least 463 million children whose schools closed due to COVID-19, “there was no such a thing as remote learning,” the head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday, as the agency launched a new report outlining the limitations of remote learning and exposing the deep inequalities in access.  

A UN taskforce set up to look into the risks and benefits of the digital economy, has concluded that it could have a transformational impact on sustainable development, and empower citizens, both as taxpayers and investors.

Achieving a nuclear-free world is the best way to honour lives devastated by these weapons, the UN disarmament chief told a virtual meeting held on Wednesday to commemorate the International Day against Nuclear Tests, observed annually on 29 August. 

Following a deadly explosion earlier this month, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has delivered some 67 tons of critical humanitarian supplies to affected children and families in Beirut.

Through two airlifts and commercial cargo routes, vital personal protective equipment (PPE), medical, health hygiene and nutrition supplies were able to reach those in desperate need.

There is likely only a slim possibility of people being reinfected with COVID-19, the UN health agency said on Tuesday, following reports in Hong Kong that a man had contracted new coronavirus for a second time after an interval of more than four months.

With Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh) and other terrorist groups attempting to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic for their own ends, the international community must respond with stronger collective action and cooperation,  the top UN counter-terrorism official said on Monday. 

Tourism is much more than visiting cultural landmarks or swimming in tropical beaches; it is “one of the world’s most important economic sectors”, the UN chief said on Tuesday.

Launching his latest policy brief, on tourism, Secretary-General António Guterres, pointed out that the industry “employs one-in-every-ten people on Earth and provides livelihoods to hundreds of millions more”.