Since the beginning of the year, Rwanda-backed M23 fighters have swept across eastern DRC, taking key cities including Goma and Bukavu. The violence has displaced more than one million people in Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu provinces. Speaking from the village of Sake in North Kivu, UNDP Resident Representative...
Mr. Hassan and his fellow Youth Councillors advise and actively engage with the WHO Director-General and the agency’s senior leadership, designing and expanding the agency’s programmes and strategies. In an interview with UN News ahead of the 2025 World Health Assembly – the UN’s highest forum for global health – Mr. Hassan,...
In 2024, 122 million people were forcibly displaced — a number expected to rise in the coming years, according to Bob Rae, President of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), addressing a meeting on the pressing issue in New York on Thursday. As population movements become much more complex...
“Attacks on frontline regions (are) increasing and it’s always civilians that are bearing the highest cost of the war,” said UNHCR Representative Karolina Lindholm Billing. Since January, more than 3,500 newly displaced people have transited through a centre in Pavlohrad towards central Ukraine; in total, more than 200,000 people have been evacuated...
Investment in organic farming, sustainable textiles and eco-tourism is helping mountain communities in Central Asia adapt to global warming, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Thursday, urging greater support for regions often overlooked in climate discussions. Mountain residents relying on family farming are among the world’s poorest...
In the makeshift coastal encampments of Al Mawasi, families have no choice but to live in unsanitary conditions that are rapidly turning deadly, Louise Wateridge, Senior Emergency Officer at Palestine refugee agency, UNRWA, told UN News. She described an increasingly dire situation: malnourished children and families, already worn down by...
The Indigenous Karen people and the Thai Lanna community of Thailand are concerned about plans to divert and dam the Yuam river and its branches, which could undo years of careful stewardship. Members of both communities spoke to a team from UN University ahead of the release of the 2025 Interconnected Disaster...
Speaking to journalists from Yangon on Tuesday, Julia Rees, Deputy Representative of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the country described seeing massive needs rising by the hour, after a 7.7 magnitude quake. “Entire communities have been flattened,” she said, with children and families sleeping out in the open with...
“Immediately after the ceasefire came into force at 4am, residents of south Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut and the Bekaa (valley) began their return after months of forced displacement,” said the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. “Heavy traffic [was] observed on the highway from Beirut to the south since the...
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that a response plan had been activated to strengthen surveillance, contact tracing and water sampling. The case was confirmed in Akkar, the country’s northernmost governorate. Speaking in Geneva late Wednesday, Tedros noted that the Lebanese health authorities had launched an oral...
This year’s commemoration pays tribute to the people and organizations that have been on the frontlines of the disease – from fighting stigma and discrimination, to advocating for access to affordable interventions and community-led services. They “have left an indelible mark on the world with their activism,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. ...
Despite progress in clearing debris, the city still wears a haunting emptiness that is slowly returning to community life, thanks to support from the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM). Emel and her family were lucky to survive. Yet, their survival came at the heavy cost of losing everything they...