What's New

Global advocates for refugees are pushing to ensure the COVID-19 pandemic does not derail efforts for displaced children and young people to continue learning and eventually return to a real classroom.

During a roundtable discussion held online on Monday, top UN officials, education ministers, and young refugees, together with representatives from the private sector and non-governmental organizations, highlighted growing needs on the ground - during the crisis and beyond.

In much of the world, “hunger remains deeply entrenched and is rising”, the UN chief said on Monday, launching this year’s major UN food security update, highlighting that over the past five years, tens of millions of people have joined the ranks of the chronically undernourished.

Although COVID-19 has tested “national resilience, international solidarity and multilateral cooperation”, we must not “pause our efforts” in the battle against terrorism, the UN counter-terrorism chief said on Friday.

The COVID-19 pandemic affects everyone, everywhere, “but it does not affect everyone equally”, the UN chief said in his message for World Population Day, on Sunday.

“It is deepening existing inequalities and vulnerabilities, particularly for women and girls”, said Secretary-General António Guterres. 

On its fourth attempt this week, the Security Council has on Saturday, authorized for one year, cross-border humanitarian aid from Turkey into northwest Syria.

Updated resolution 2533 will allow the delivery of food, medicine and other lifesaving assistance through the Bab al-Hawa Border Crossing.

Germany, cosponsor of the resolution, expressed relief over the extension. 

As COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the world, Latin America and the Caribbean have become a “hotspot of the pandemic”, the UN chief said on Thursday, releasing a new policy initiative on how best to recover in a region already embroiled in poverty, hunger, unemployment and inequality. 
 

A new mechanism launched on Thursday aims to speed up action so that people everywhere will have access to water and sanitation by the end of the decade, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Global Acceleration Framework for SDG 6 addresses an issue which cuts across many areas of the UN’s work.

The growing use of weaponised drones risks destabilising global peace and security and creating a “drone power club” among nations, that face no effective accountability for deploying them as part of their “war on terror”, a senior UN-appointed independent rights expert said on Thursday.

Annual global temperature is likely to be at least 1°C warmer than pre-industrial levels in each of the coming five years, putting globally agreed climate change targets in jeopardy, new data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveals.

The prediction is among the findings in the UN agency’s latest Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, released on Thursday in Geneva, which also shows that temperature could exceed 1.5°C in at least one year between now and 2024.

More than 50 Heads of State and government, alongside global employers’ and trade union leaders, have been taking part in an online discussion on Wednesday looking at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world of work.