Sustainable Development Goals

Their main call: developed countries must uphold their promise of finance and support to the small states that are at risk of losing so much to the combat against climate change. “From the ocean came forth life, peace and comfort, a world not known to most but that was one with my people…We will remember a time when our homes stood proud and tall, for today they stand no more. That place is now taken by the ocean”. The eighth day of the UN Climate Conference began with a poem recited by an...

With significant travel restrictions and large portions of personnel working from home in 2020, the UN system generated approximately 25 per cent fewer greenhouse emissions than in the year before. That’s one of the key points to emerge from the Greening the Blue Report 2021, the first study to reveal the impact that COVID-19 has had on the UN system’s environmental footprint. Addressing the report, the UN Secretary-General remembered that the world still faces a triple emergency – a...

The world must not forget the roughly one million Rohingya from Myanmar “forced to run for their lives from the military’s genocidal attack against them”, an independent UN human rights expert said on Monday, beginning his first mission to Bangladesh. The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, began his official visit with a statement reminding that when conditions allow for their safe, dignified and sustainable repatriation, “the Rohingya want nothing...

Asylum-seekers and other migrants continue to be forcefully expelled from Libya, raising concerns at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Speaking to journalists in Geneva, Spokesperson Rupert Colville, pointed out a “continuing series” of expulsions, including two large groups of Sudanese over the past month, and another group of 24 Eritreans, apparently at imminent risk of similar treatment. According to a team on the ground, on Monday a group...

Despite repeated calls for concrete international action to reduce the tragic death toll of migrants, dozens were killed in Mexico when a crowded truck overturned in Chiapas on Thursday night, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) said in a statement released on Friday. At least 54 reportedly Central American migrants died and more than 100 were injured – the single deadliest incident for migrants in Mexico since at least 2014, when IOM began documenting deaths. “Today is...

A flare-up in intercommunal fighting in northern Cameroon has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes and brought a halt to aid operations there, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Friday. The development is just the latest episode in the difficult relationship between the region’s herders, fishermen and farmers, who have seen the waters and tributaries of Lake Chad shrink dramatically, because of climate change-induced drought. In Geneva, UNHCR spokesperson Boris...

The increasing needs of refugees and migrants from Venezuela have worsened with the COVID-19 pandemic, say UN rights experts. The number of Venezuelans worldwide who’ve gone on the run has now topped six million, with the vast majority hosted by countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and migration agency (IOM), have stepped up their response to the crisis and are launching a joint appeal for $1.79 billion, to fund a regional plan for supporting the...

Conflict, climate change and COVID-19, have created a perfect storm of challenges facing refugees, displaced people and their hosts, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, told the Security Council on Tuesday. The deadly mix has increased forced displacement and increased hardships, while the climate emergency has fuelled conflict in Sahel, he said. Underlining the importance of putting the climate emergency “front and centre” of Security Council’s agenda, the top UNHCR...

With escalating violence displacing thousands of people since November, the humanitarian situation in Sudan’s Darfur is getting worse and around 6.2 million people will need humanitarian assistance next year, UN agencies reported on Tuesday. The Principal Situation Coordinator for the region at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Toby Harward, told journalists in Geneva that the agency is deeply concerned about the situation. According to him, nearly 10,000 Sudanese have fled a wave of...

Amidst “truly unprecedented levels” of hunger in Afghanistan, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday that as winter arrives, avoiding widespread starvation “is an immediate priority”.  Launching a global fundraising winter campaign to help forcibly displaced families in Afghanistan and elsewhere to cope with the most life-threatening months of the year, UNHCR Spokesperson Babar Baloch described it as “a crisis of hunger and starvation”. “People don’t have enough to eat, and it’s...