What's New

The Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is taking advantage of a new initiative, to become the first UN peacekeeping mission to provide gender-sensitive housing and invest in better working conditions for women peacekeepers serving there.

UNIFIL’s pioneering move has been made possible thanks to the Elsie Initiative Fund for Women in Peace Operations, a multilateral fund set up by Member States, that aims to accelerate progress towards gender parity in peacekeeping operations.

The world must accept that COVID-19 is with us “for the foreseeable future”, even if it is possible to end the acute phase of the pandemic this year, UN health agency chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Monday.

Food insecurity is soaring across 20 countries and regions - “hunger hotspots”, where conflict, economic shocks, natural hazards, political instability, and limited humanitarian access, are putting millions of lives at risk, UN agencies highlighted on Thursday. 

The UN and its partners need to reach more Syrians with immediate life-saving aid, the UN relief chief warned the Security Council on Thursday, calling for expanded access and more funds to sustain humanitarian operations, as the country struggles with an uptick in violence, deepening economic crisis, and a winter storm that has left a ‘trail of destruction’ in its wake. 

With no shifts in the frontlines in almost two years, the UN Special Envoy for Syria warnedt he Security Council about “a strategic stalemate” in the nearly 11-year-old war. 

For Geir Pedersen, despite the continued violence and suffering, it is clear that “a military solution remains an illusion”and no combatant can determine the outcome of the conflict.

Mr. Pederson also said that Syrians continue to suffer deeply.

Four days after ISIL terrorists launched apparently coordinated attacks on a large prison in northeast Syria in a bid to free fighters detained there, the UN Human Rights Office, OHCHR, described the still unfolding situation on Tuesday as “deeply troubling”.

The attempted jailbreak began last Thursday with two coordinated car bomb attacks to free suspected ISIL members – sparking violence between ISIL fighters and Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Forces (SDF) which control the prison, including in residential areas of Al-Hasekeh.

Well below zero temperatures hitting Syria this week have turned camps for internally displaced people into disaster zones, the UN Deputy Regional Humanitarian Coordinator warned on Monday. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on education, laying bare a crisis that was already causing widespread concern well before the spread of the virus. Robert Jenkins, the Director of Education at the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, is calling for a transformation in learning, amid warnings that the current system is failing millions of people.

Although young people have been at the forefront of efforts to build and sustain peace, opportunities for them to make a meaningful contribution remain insufficient, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday. 

Addressing the opening of the High-Level Global Conference on Youth-Inclusive Peace Processes, taking place online, he urged the international community to step up support. 

Last year joined the list of the seven warmest years on record, the UN weather agency said on Wednesday, and was also the seventh consecutive year when the global temperature has been more than 1°C above pre-industrial levels; edging closer to the limit laid out under the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change.