What's New

Turkish diplomat Volkan Bozkir was elected President of the forthcoming session of the UN General Assembly in a vote held on Wednesday that was emblematic of its time.

Wearing facemasks and practicing physical distancing, ambassadors from 192 UN Member States filed into the iconic but empty General Assembly Hall to cast their ballots during pre-determined time slots: an added layer of protection in the COVID-19 era.

The COVID-19 crisis has caused a dramatic spike in the number of Syrian refugees in need of emergency assistance in the last three months, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday, in an appeal for funding to confront new challenges posed by the health emergency.

Now into its tenth year, the Syrian conflict has created more than 5.5 million refugees seeking shelter in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

With war-weary Syria in economic freefall and protesters back on the streets, all sides – domestic and international – must find a way forward that helps its people overcome their suffering and shape their own future, UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen says.

He told the Security Council on Tuesday – meeting via video-teleconference - that he is ready to convene a third session of the Syria-led and Syrian-owned constitutional committee in Geneva, towards the end of August, given COVID-19 travel restrictions.

Despite the ongoing global response to COVID-19, the world cannot lose sight of the significant public health risk posed by influenza, which affects every country every year and takes its own deadly toll, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Monday. 

On the occasion of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, the member entities of United Nations Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict express their grave concern at the continued use of sexual violence as a tactic of war, terrorism and political repression, and call on all parties to conflicts to commit to ceasing such acts as part of the Secretary-General's call for a global ceasefire made in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus and declaration of the pandemic, the UN Secretary-General and other senior leaders of the UN and its institutions have increasingly drawn attention to the challenge of the “infodemic” [1] or misinformation and disinformation pandemic. Quoting the UN Secretary General, “as COVID-19 spreads, a tsunami of misinformation, hate, scapegoating and scare-mongering has been unleashed”.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to escalate, the World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned about its impact on women, children and young people.

“The indirect effects of COVID-19 on these groups may be greater than the number of deaths due to the virus itself”, agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.

Huge gains made towards ending child labour over the last 20 years, risk being reversed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN said on Friday, in an appeal for governments to continue investing in measures that have helped reduce the number of youngsters working, by 94 million, since 2000.

Existing global estimates indicate that 152 million children are being put to work, but the figure is due to be updated next year, once the wider impact of coronavirus lockdown precautions become clearer.

Managing the digital divide better, has become “a matter of life and death” for people unable to access essential healthcare information during the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN chief has told a virtual high-level meeting on rapid technological change.

UN chief António Guterres, has warned of an “unparalleled economic shock”, as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. So, going forward, can the private sector “build back better” to reorder the post-pandemic world, or, might the UN’s vision of a sustainable future be relegated to a low-priority aspiration? We put these questions to the CEO of one of the world’s largest conglomerates, who is working with the Organization, towards a better future.