UN News

The values that we ascribe to nature are vital parts of our cultures, identities, economies, and ways of life, all of which should be reflected in policy decisions surrounding our natural world, according to a new UN-backed report released on Monday. However, the new Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ (IPBES) assessment report […]

Donors on Wednesday pledged $33 million towards a UN-coordinated plan to prevent an ageing oil tanker moored off the west Coast of Yemen from sparking a potential ecological and humanitarian disaster.  The FSO Safer, which is holding more than a million barrels of oil, has been described as a “time bomb” because it is at […]

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has again called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Ukraine to allow delivery of life-saving aid as well as evacuations, his spokesperson said on Monday. The appeal followed attacks on cities across the country– most recently Lviv, Dnipro, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv – which resulted in numerous civilian casualties and destruction. Mr. […]

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on Thursday calling for Russia to be suspended from the Human Rights Council.  The resolution received a two-thirds majority of those voting, minus abstentions, in the 193-member Assembly, with 93 nations voting in favour and 24 against.   Fifty-eight abstained from the process.  Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, […]

Briefing by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, on the situation in Ukraine. WARNING: The video contains graphic images at the end!

A new flagship UN report on climate change out Monday indicating that harmful carbon emissions from 2010-2019 have never been higher in human history, is proof that the world is on a “fast track” to disaster, António Guterres has warned. Reacting to the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Secretary-General insisted […]

A new UN initiative aims to promote greater inclusion and acceptance of transgender children, and to advocate for their rights. The Unbox Me campaign was launched by UNAIDS ahead of the International Transgender Day of Visibility, observed this Thursday, 31 March.  The goal is to raise awareness among parents, teachers, and the wider community about gender identity during childhood.  […]

Russia must immediately suspend military operations in Ukraine, the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on Wednesday, in The Hague. By a vote of 13 to two, with Vice-President Kirill Gevorgian of Russia and Judge Xue Hanqin of China dissenting, the ICJ ruled that Russia “shall immediately suspend the military operations that it commenced on 24 February.” The court’s ruling […]

JUBA, March 11, 2020 – More than 70 percent of the South Sudanese population will struggle to survive the peak of the lean season this year as the country grapples with unprecedented levels of food insecurity caused by conflict, climate shocks, covid, and rising costs, warned the United Nations World Food Programme today. While global […]

March 4, 2022 – International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi briefed journalists on the situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine today, Friday 4 March 2022 at 10:30 CET.

The world must be made a safer place for people working to protect the planet, who sometimes pay with their own lives for their activism, UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet said on Tuesday.  “Protecting the environment goes hand-in-hand with protecting the rights of those who defend it,” she told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, which is […]

An estimated 13 million people are waking up severely hungry every day in the Horn of Africa, as the region grapples with a major drought caused by the driest conditions since 1981, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Tuesday. Three consecutive failed rainy seasons in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, have decimated crops and caused […]

As news coverage of the eruption and tsunami that hit Tonga starts to fade away, the United Nations Coordination Specialist in the country has a message to the outside world: Tonga’s people are going to need sustained support responding to a disaster of this scale.  “The resources that we have in the ground are not […]

Genocide “remains a very real threat” around the world, said the UN chief on Thursday, marking the UN International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide, and of the Prevention of this Crime.  “The international community has repeatedly failed to respond collaboratively, swiftly and decisively to prevent genocide and related atrocity crimes”, António […]

Since the creation of the World Wide Web, we have had access to more information than ever before. However, we are also bombarded with dangerous disinformation. The UN’s Verified campaign has launched an online course to help us decide which is which, and protect vulnerable people from potential harm. It has become increasingly apparent that, for some […]

October 29, 2021 – In a world shaken by a pandemic, and a fast-closing window of opportunity to avoid climate catastrophe, the pivotal COP26 UN climate conference kicks off this Sunday in the Scottish city of Glasgow – the stakes could not be higher.  “Without decisive action, we are gambling away our last chance to […]

October 27, 2021 – In a UN first, a ferocious and talkative dinosaur bursts into the iconic General Assembly Hall at UN Headquarters in New York, with a special warning for any diplomats who still think climate action is for the birds.   “At least we had an asteroid,” the carnivorous critter warns, referring to the popular theory explaining dinosaurs’ extinction 70 million years ago. “What’s your excuse?”  This isn’t […]

Between 80,000 and 180,000 health and care workers may have died from COVID-19 between January of 2020 and May of this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.  That grim estimate features in a new WHO working paper based on the 3.45 million coronavirus-related deaths reported globally to the UN health agency up to May; a figure that WHO said may well be at least 60 per cent lower than the […]