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 The top United Nations relief official has expressed his deep concern about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Yemen, noting that a record 22.2 million people are now in need of assistance – 3.4 million more than last year.

Drawing on UN-wide collaboration efforts, UNIC Beirut took a leading initiative in making use of the UN’s wide network of resources, particularly the UN Volunteers system, to conduct an activity advocating UN values, campaigns and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

With the crisis in war-ravaged Yemen continuing to deteriorate, United Nations agencies and humanitarian partners have launched a $2.96 billion response plan to reach over 13 million people with lifesaving assistance.

The upward trend in global temperatures marked by record-shattering warmth in 2015 and 2016 kept pace last year, with the United Nations weather agency warning Thursday that continued pressure on the Arctic in 2017 will have “profound and long-lasting repercussions on sea levels, and on weather patterns in other parts of the world.”

A record 4.1 billion passengers took to the skies in 2017 onboard some 37 million scheduled flights globally, the United Nations civil aviation agency reported Thursday, highlighting that the fastest growth was seen among low-cost carriers.

According to preliminary figures released by the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), air travel demand growth too gained “solid momentum” on the back of improved global economic conditions throughout the year.

Conflict is not always linear, with a clear beginning, middle and end, the President of the United Nations General Assembly said Thursday, urging a new approach to peace that requires action at all stages of the conflict cycle.

“We are no longer dealing only with tanks, planes, and uniformed troops,” Miroslav Lajčák told a two-day regional forum on ‘Sustaining Peace’ held in Doha, Qatar, explaining that other factors, such as terrorism, growing internal violence, new technology and climate change, have transformed the faces of conflict and peace.

 Intensification in hostilities across Syria is having a “devastating” impact on civilians, United Nations agencies in the war-ravaged country said Wednesday, warning that the fighting is also severely limiting life-saving humanitarian operations.

“In the last few weeks, increasing indiscriminate bombing, shelling and fighting forced tens of thousands of people to be uprooted,” said the UN agencies in a statement.

 The decision by the United States to withhold more than half its annual funding commitment to the United Nations relief agency providing aid for Palestine refugees threatens “one of the most successful and innovative human development endeavours in the Middle-East,” the head of the body said Wednesday, warning that the rights and dignity of an entire community are at stake.

 Having taken office with a call for peace to be the watchword of 2017, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday said the world instead had ‘gone in reverse,” and that there are critical areas that need action in the New Year, including climate change, the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, the Middle East conflict, and the Rohingya crisis.

On top of the already-desperate conditions in Syria’s war-ravaged East Ghouta and north-west Idlib governorate, a violence upsurge is intensifying insecurity, the United Nations food relief agency said Tuesday.

“Since the end of last year, airstrikes have destroyed numerous civilian buildings, killing hundreds of people in both places and, in the case of Idlib, displacing some 100,000 people,” said UN World Food Programme (WFP) Senior Communications Officer Bettina Luescher at the regular press briefing in Geneva.