Page 49 - United Nations

'More purposeful' UN will deliver on Global South's expectations: EAM

On October 24, United Nations Day marks the anniversary of the entry into force in 1945 of the UN Charter.

UN leaders welcome aid's entry into Gaza but note it's far from enough

United Nations leaders and agencies have welcomed the entry of a humanitarian aid convoy into Gaza via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt but noted that it is only a small beginning, still far from enough and reiterated their appeal for an immediate ceasefire. A 20-truck convoy of the Egyptian Red Crescent entered Gaza with humanitarian supplies, the first since the conflict began following attacks by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on October 7. "I want to express my deep gratitude to Egypt in this regard. But the people of Gaza need a commitment for much, much more a continuous delivery of aid to Gaza at the scale that is needed," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Saturday. "We are working nonstop with all parties that are relevant to make it happen, he said in remarks at the Cairo Summit for Peace. Five UN agencies - UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and t

Hamas assault can't justify collective punishment of Palestinians: UN Chief

He made the remarks at the Cairo Peace Summit in Egypt, which was convened by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to de-escalate hostilities following the deadly Hamas attack

UN watches Japanese lab prepare fish samples from damaged nuclear plant

Scientists from the UN nuclear agency watched on Friday as Japanese lab workers prepared samples of fish collected at a seafood market near the Fukushima nuclear plant to test the safety of treated radioactive wastewater released from the damaged plant into the sea. The discharge of wastewater began on August 24 and is expected to continue for decades. It has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and neighbouring countries, including China and Russia, which have banned all imports of Japanese seafood. Japan's government and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, say the discharge is unavoidable because wastewater storage tanks at the plant will be full next year. They say the water produced by the damaged plant is treated to reduce radioactivity to safe levels, and then diluted with massive amounts of seawater to make it much safer than international standards. On Friday, a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency watched as fish samples were prepared a

US veto at UN to shield Israel could compromise its Ukraine rallying cry

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield justified Wednesday's veto by telling the council more time was needed for diplomacy

UN-backed aid could soon enter Gaza from Egypt, but only at trickle for now

President Joe Biden says he struck a deal with his Egyptian counterpart to allow a first run of 20 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, which Israel sealed off after the Hamas attack on October 7. Israel says it's now ready to honour Biden's request to let in limited humanitarian aid. The Egyptian and Palestinian Red Crescent Societies and the United Nations are expected to help oversee the operation, in part to ensure the supplies from the convoy through the Rafah Crossing on Egypt's border with Gaza reaches civilians not combatants. Official at the UN health agency say they're praying the first tranche will go in on Friday. Here's a look at what could be expected to go in, and how. WHAT THE TRUCKS WILL CARRY The United Nations and its various agencies the World Health Organisation, the World Food Program, and children's agency UNICEF among them along with partners like Red Cross and Red Crescent groups are accustomed to moving needed goods to troubled areas. They

India's interests at stake as world trade talks take a green turn

Country has raised objections to European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism

UN Security Council to hold emergency session after Gaza hospital blast

Russia and United Arab Emirates called for open meeting shortly after the explosion, in courtyard of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, which according to Hamas sources killed some 500 Palestinians

UN appeals for $19 mn to provide emergency food in quake-hit Afghanistan

The United Nations' World Food Program on Wednesday appealed for USD 19 million to provide emergency assistance to tens of thousands of people affected by a series of devastating earthquakes and aftershocks that has rocked western Afghanistan. Ana Maria Salhuana, deputy country director of the World Food Program in Afghanistan, said it was helping survivors but it urgently needed more funding because we are having to take this food from an already severely underfunded program. The group said it is working to provide emergency food assistance to 100,000 people in the region. Disasters like these earthquakes pound communities who are already barely able to feed themselves back into utter destitution," the WFP said. A 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck part of western Afghanistan on Sunday, after thousands of people died and entire villages were flattened by major quakes a week earlier. It was the fourth quake the US Geological Survey has measured at 6.3 magnitude in the same area in ju

'Get us out of this hellhole': SOS messages by UNRWA staff in Gaza

The 13,000-strong staff working with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees is terrified and tired and described the situation in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip as a hellhole, a spokeswoman for the agency said. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is the largest UN agency working in the Gaza Strip, both in terms of the size of its operations as well as the number of staff. The 13,000-strong UNRWA staff in Gaza includes teachers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, warehouse workers, logisticians, technicians and drivers. We have a very, very big operation in the Gaza Strip. What we hear from our staff is that they are terrified and they're tired. They want all of this to come to an end and the message that we're getting is: Get us out of this hellhole. This has become hell', UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma told reporters here through video conference on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Touma said the messages of SOS' have

Gaza's limited water supply raises concerns as conflict intensifies

A lack of clean water in the Gaza Strip is raising major concerns for human health. Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life, said Philippe Lazzarini, chief of the U.N. agency for Palestinians. Gaza normally gets its water supplies from a combination of sources, including a pipeline from Israel, desalination plants on the Mediterranean Sea and wells. Those supplies were slashed when Israel cut off water, along with the fuel and electricity that power water and sewage plants, in the wake of the Hamas attacks. The United Nations recognizes access to water as a human right, and on a basic level, the human body needs a constant supply of water to survive. Next to air, water is really the most important thing for maintenance of your health, said Dr. Tsion Firew, an emergency physician at Columbia University who has worked on water access in humanitarian settings. A report from the U.S. National Academies of Science and Medicine says men need to drink about 3.7 liter

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Israel-Gaza war: Nations call for peaceful resolution; latest updates here

As the conflict between Israel and Gaza enters day 10, devastating humanitarian consequences emerge

We are on 'verge of collapse', running out of body bags: Head of UN agency

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which has the largest UN footprint in the Gaza Strip, has warned that it is on the verge of collapse and was even running out of body bags amidst the raging conflict between Israel and the Hamas militants. As I speak with you, Gaza is running out of water and electricity. In fact, Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on the situation in the Gaza Strip on Sunday. Gaza is now even running out of body bags. Entire families are being ripped apart," he said. Addressing a press conference at UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem, Lazzarini said his colleagues in Gaza are no longer able to provide humanitarian assistance. The number of people seeking shelter in our schools and other UNRWA facilities in the South is absolutely overwhelming, and we do not have any

Six months of war in Sudan has killed 9,000 people, says UN aid chief

Six months of war between Sudan's military and a powerful paramilitary group has killed up to 9,000 people and created "one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history," the United Nations humanitarian chief said Sunday. Sudan has been engulfed in chaos since mid-April, when simmering tensions between military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into open warfare. "For six months, civilians ... have known no respite from bloodshed and terror," UN Undersecretary-General Martin Griffiths said in a statement marking the six-month anniversary of the war. "Horrific reports of rape and sexual violence continue to emerge." The fighting initially centred in Khartoum, but quickly spread to other areas across the east African nation, including the already conflict-wrecked western Darfur region. Griffiths said the fighting reportedly killed up to 9,000 and forced millions of people out of th

Isreal's relocation order 'extremely dangerous': UN chief Guterres

Israel's ultimatum that over one million people in northern Gaza should relocate within 24 hours is "extremely dangerous" and "simply not possible", UN chief Antonio Guterres has said, asserting that "even wars have rules. UN officials in Gaza on Thursday were informed by their liaison officers in the Israeli military that the entire population of northern Gaza, approximately 1.1 million, should relocate to the southern part within the next 24 hours. The same order applied to all UN staff and those sheltered in UN facilities including schools, health centres and clinics. Moving more than one million people across a densely populated warzone to a place with no food, water, or accommodation, when the entire territory is under siege, is extremely dangerous and in some cases, simply not possible, Guterres told reporters here on Friday. The UN Secretary-General made those remarks before heading to a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East. He said that after days

WHO pleads for reversal of Gaza evacuation order to reduce suffering

The WHO has "joined the wider United Nations in appealing to Israel to immediately rescind orders for the evacuation of over 1 million people living north of Wadi Gaza," it said

Israel's military issues unprecedented orders to evacuate Gaza City

Israel's military told some 1 million Palestinians living in Gaza on Friday to evacuate the north, according to the United Nations, an unprecedented order for almost half the population of the sealed-off territory ahead of an expected ground invasion against the ruling Hamas militant group. The UN warned that so many people fleeing en masse would be calamitous, and Hamas, which staged a shocking and brutal attack on Israel this week, dismissed it as a ploy and called on people to stay in their homes, adding to widespread panic. The evacuation order, which includes Gaza City, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, sparked confusion among civilians and aid workers already running from Israeli airstrikes and contending with a total siege and a territory-wide power blackout. Forget about food, forget about electricity, forget about fuel. The only concern now is just if you'll make it, if you're going to live, said Nebal Farsakh, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent in

Over 90% of people killed by Afghanistan quake were women and children: UN

More than 90 per cent of the people killed by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake in western Afghanistan last weekend were women and children, U.N. officials reported Thursday. Taliban officials said Saturday's earthquake killed more than 2,000 people of all ages and genders across Herat province. The epicentre was in Zenda Jan district, where 1,294 people died, 1,688 were injured and every home was destroyed, according to U.N. figures. Women and children were more likely to have been at home when the quake struck in the morning, said Siddig Ibrahim, the chief of the UNICEF field office in Herat. When the first earthquake hit, people thought it was an explosion, and they ran into their homes, he said. Hundreds of people, mostly women, remain missing in Zenda Jan. The Afghanistan representative for the United Nations Population Fund, Jaime Nadal, said there would have been no gender dimension to the death toll if the quake had happened at night. At that time of the day, men were out in the

Israel orders evacuation of 1.1 mn people from northern part of Gaza: UN

Israel's military on Friday directed the evacuation of northern Gaza, a region that is home to 1.1 people, within 24 hours, a UN spokesman said. The order, delivered to the U.N., comes as Israel presses an offensive against Hamas militants. UN spokesman Stphane Dujarric called the order impossible without devastating humanitarian consequences. This could signal an impending ground offensive, though the Israeli military has not yet confirmed such an appeal. On Thursday it said that while it was preparing, a decision has not yet been made.