What's New

Written by Nadine Abi Zeid Daou

On the occasion of the first anniversary of the Beirut blast, UN Country Team in Lebanon with diplomatic corps observe a minute of silence to honor the victims.

The urgent need to reduce emissions and slow global heating, should involve the roll-out of more nuclear power stations, regional UN energy experts argued in a new briefing on Wednesday.

Unilateral coercive measures by some governments are denying many people around the world the right to personal development, as well as holding back sustainable national development, four independent UN human rights experts said on Wednesday. 

Three new candidate drugs are being tested in the latest phase of global Solidarity clinical trials to find effective treatments against COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday. 

The therapies — artesunate, imatinib and infliximab — will be tested on hospitalized COVID-19 patients in 52 countries under the Solidarity PLUS programme.  

Although some countries have begun to rectify their “heinous legacy” of discrimination against indigenous people, more action is still needed, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday. 

Despite an overall decrease in maritime traffic due to the COVID-19 pandemic, piracy and armed robbery of ships rose by nearly 20 per cent during the first half of last year, a senior UN official told the Security Council on Monday. 

Addressing a high-level debate on enhancing security for seafarers, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, the UN Secretary-General’s Chef de Cabinet, highlighted the need for stronger international cooperation. 

Climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying, and some trends are now irreversible, at least during the present time frame, according to the latest much-anticipated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released on Monday.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, said on Friday that escalating hostilities over the past two days involving Lebanese and Israeli forces have created “a very dangerous situation” in the volatile border region.

In a statement, the peacekeeping mission said that late Friday morning, it had detected rocket launches from outside its area of operations in south Lebanon towards the Israeli-occupied Golan.  

Entrepreneurship can mean more freedom for women according to the first Latin-American advocate of eTrade for All, an initiative developed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to expand and promote the digital economy, especially in low and middle-income countries.

Pierangela Sierra set up an e-commerce platform in Ecuador called Tipti to make shopping easier but also to save people time.

The top UN rights official once more sounded the alarm on Thursday over the plight of civilians in Syria, as intense fighting and indiscriminate shelling by Government forces and armed opposition groups paralyze neighbourhoods in and around the southern city of Daraa.