What's New

International donors at a United Nations-European Union humanitarian conference pledged nearly $4.4 billion on Wednesday to fund critical aid programmes in war-torn Syria throughout 2018.

Gathered in the Belgian capital, Brussels, alongside top officials from over 85 countries and organizations, UN and EU leaders also stressed that the stalled UN-led Syrian political negotiations, known as the intra-Syrian talks, must be revived.

The Acting United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Pernille Kardel visited today the areas of Ras Baalbek and Arsal along Lebanon’s north-eastern borders. Ms. Kardel met with representatives of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and toured the border area. She also met with the local authorities in Arsal.

Calling for more diplomacy, dialogue and mediation to head off conflicts before they break out, United Nations officials urged a gathering of world leaders on Tuesday to help strengthen a new approach to sustaining peace, which aims to put prevention at the heart of the UN’s work.

With one in four of the world’s 1.2 billion youth affected by some sort of violence or armed conflict, the United Nations on Tuesday launched a project to support new, youth-driven initiatives in education, science, culture and the media to prevent violent extremism in Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.

With the conflict in Syria into its eighth bloody year and human suffering worsening by the day, the United Nations and partners on Tuesday made a major appeal for additional funds, as well as for reinvigorating the stalled UN-led Geneva talks.

A photojournalist who has been in jail for nearly five years after being arrested for covering a demonstration in Cairo has been selected to receive this year’s press freedom prize from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In its endeavor to promote the Sustainable Development Goals and Lebanon’s role as a key contributor to their implementation at the local level, the UN Information Centre (UNIC) in Beirut collaborated with Exicon International Group, and prominent media figure Ghada Ballout, producer of a talk show on economic development, to organize a series of media forums in various Lebanese regions. ExiCon International Group organizes scientific and economic conferences.

Days after alleged chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma, the United Nations Security Council failed to adopt two competing resolutions that would have established a mechanism to investigate use of such weapons in Syria, as well as another concerning a fact-finding mission in the war-torn country.

Had one of the two mechanisms proposed in the drafts been approved, it could have filled the vacuum left by the Organisation for Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) when its mandate expired last November.

On the day set aside to raise awareness about the threat of mines, unexploded grenades and other munitions that impede the return to normal life after conflict, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has urged Governments to provide political and financial support to keep up vital mine actionwork wherever it is needed.

Two realities – one where no one goes thirsty; other where billions don’t have water to drink

Alongside the Secretary-General, Mahmoud Saikal, the Vice-President of the General Assembly (speaking on behalf of Assembly President Miroslav Lajčák) said that while many in the world have adequate safe drinking water and sanitation facilities, billions on the same planet lack even a basic toilet and are forced to drink water that can make them ill.