World News

Global perspective Human stories File photo of Catherine Colonna, Chair of the Independent Review Group on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). 20 March 2024UN Affairs UN Secretary-General António Guterres has received the interim findings of an independent panel conducting an assessment of UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinians, his office said on Wednesday in a note to correspondents. The review follows serious allegations regarding the alleged...

20 March 2024Human Rights The UN’s deputy human rights chief on Wednesday underscored the need to ensure accountability for ongoing serious violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), stressing that it would also benefit long-term peace and security across the region. In an oral update to the Human Rights Council – UN’s paramount human rights body – Deputy High Commissioner Nada Al-Nashif said that DPRK (more commonly known as North Korea) was showing no signs of...

Based on over 2,300 testimonies from victims and witnesses, the report details measures taken by Russia to impose Russian language, citizenship, laws, court system and education curricula in the occupied areas, while at the same time suppressing expressions of Ukrainian culture and identity, and dismantling its governance and administrative systems. “The actions of the Russian Federation have ruptured the social fabric of communities and left individuals isolated, with profound and...

While ceasefire talks failed to end the five-month-long conflict that has killed nearly 32,000 Palestinians – most of them women and children – the goal of some youngsters living in the makeshift camp was simple. The children of Deir Al-Balah decided to lift their spirits in the face of ongoing war and celebrate the holy month of Ramadan, despite all the difficulties. Shahad is a displaced child who lives with her family in a makeshift shelter in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. ‘We...

In February 2021 the military overthrew the elected Government in Myanmar arresting hundreds of officials, political leaders and activists, including President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. The takeover triggered an intensification of armed conflicts with separatists and opposition forces across the country, including indiscriminate air strikes which have killed numerous civilians. There have been mass killings of detainees, including dismemberment and desecration of...

19 March 2024Human Rights The accelerated adoption of a national security bill in Hong Kong represents “a regressive step” for human rights there, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday. “It is alarming that such consequential legislation was rushed through the legislature through an accelerated process, in spite of serious concerns raised about the incompatibility of many of its provisions with international human rights law,” Volker Türk said in a statement...

Addressing the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran – a group of Council-appointed independent experts – said that Ms. Amini’s death in September 2022 was “unlawful and caused by physical violence” for which the State is responsible. Chairperson Sara Hossain told the forum’s 47 Member States that after Ms. Amini’s death, young women and schoolchildren “were at the forefront” of nationwide protests: “The entire State apparatus was mobilized with...

With the release of the latest food security report from the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) on war-ravaged Gaza since December, World Food Programme (WFP) chief economist Arif Husain walked UN News through the process. When is famine declared? Famine is essentially a technical term, referring to a population that faces widespread malnutrition and hunger-related deaths due to a lack of access to food. “We say there is a famine when three conditions come together in a specific...

The arranged marriage typically involves the exchange of a highly prized and culturally important Zebu cow for teenage girls as young as 13 years old. Now two UN agencies UNICEF and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) are working together with the local authorities to educate women and also men, through sessions focusing on positive masculinity, about the dangers of the practice and how to treat women as equals. Daniel Dickinson of UN News spoke to Lehilahy Modely, who joined one of the...

Briefing ambassadors at the UN Security Council, Hans Grundberg voiced his disappointment at the failure to achieve key milestones that ordinary Yemenis have been demanding, by Ramadan. “As I briefed last month, the mediation space has grown more complex. This continues to be the case,” he said. “Although we have tried to shield the peace process from regional developments since the war in Gaza, the reality is, and allow me to repeat myself, that what happens regionally impacts Yemen – and...