Some 81,000 forcibly displaced people are hosted in temporary shelters along the Thai-Myanmar border where they have been living in the camps for decades. Nearly half the refugee population were born under canvas, where displaced families have largely depended on humanitarian assistance. Over a million Rohingya, a mostly-Muslim minority from...
Ahead of donning a beige WFP vest and boots to face hurricanes, wars and refugee camps, the Portuguese scientist worked with satellite imagery and cartography, creating maps to support humanitarian missions, until he realised he didn’t want to stay behind a computer screen. On the occasion of World Humanitarian Day,...
After a successful career that lasted 43 years, during which he worked in Saudi Arabia, for the Palestinian Ministry of Health and then the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Dr. Awadallah decided to retire at the end of 2021. But, that was short-lived. As the crisis in Gaza escalated and polio...
Under-Secretary-General Jean-Pierre Lacroix and Assistant Secretary-General Marta Pobee briefed the Council on priorities for adapting UN peace operations to foster political solutions. They emphasised the urgent need for the Council and the broader UN membership to overcome divisions and strengthen support for peace operations as unique platforms for advancing diplomacy...
Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine have taken or are considering steps to withdraw from the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction – known also as the Ottawa Convention, after the Canadian city where the process was...
There, alongside civilian gender units, Ms. Syme met a group of local community members – both men and women. Partway through, she realised something was different. “The women were not talking,” she told UN News. “They were very quiet.” Then she remembered that local cultural norms dictated women do not...
But this is not universal. Many people worldwide struggle – unable to walk into clinics or explain their symptoms: “[These patients] do not line up on waiting lists. They wait, unknowingly, for inside understanding and the courage to seek care,” said Dr. Merete Nordentoft of Denmark, describing the patients with...
This year’s global laureate for the UN refugee agency award, Sister Rosita Milesi, is a Brazilian nun, lawyer, social worker and movement builder who has championed the rights and dignity of people on the move for nearly 40 years. The four others have been named regional winners. “All too often,...
Goris, population 20,000, is a picture-postcard town, sitting in a bowl in the high mountains of southern of Armenia. It’s 25 kilometres to the border with Azerbaijan, to the Lachin corridor. During the last week in September, over 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled the Karabakh region and arrived in Goris, Armenia,...
In his Annual Report on the work of the Organization, released on Wednesday, ahead of the gathering of world leaders at UN Headquarters in New York, Mr. Guterres highlighted how the UN has stepped up. “Nowhere are the needs greater than in the midst of emergencies,” he said. “In 2022,...
The meticulous effort onboard the rusting FSO Safer spanned months of preparation and nearly 13 weeks of execution by the SMIT salvage team, which was contracted by the UN Development Programme (UNDP). “The UN and the broad group of partners that support the Safer project have so far succeeded in...
In the last decade, the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding has increased by a remarkable 10 percentage points, to 48 per cent globally, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Promoting and supporting breastfeeding at workplaces can help drive the progress higher and towards the...