Containing the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic should still be everyone’s “top priority”, UN health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday. In total, 61 countries outside China have reported 8,739 cases of infection with 127 deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General said. Of nearly 90,000 cases globally so far, with around 3,000 fatalities, 90 […]
“The struggle to beat AIDS is inseparable from the struggle for women’s rights and from the struggle against all forms of discrimination”. This is the message from Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, on Zero Discrimination Day, which falls on Sunday March 1. The theme of this year’s Day is the fight against discrimination faced by women and […]
Laws underpinned by religious conviction that discriminate against women and the LGBT+ community should be repealed, and gender-based violence carried out in the name of religion by non-State groups must be addressed, an independent UN expert said on Monday in a report presented to the Human Rights Council. “I firmly reject any claim that religious beliefs can be invoked […]
From developed to developing countries, no nation is immune from financial “gaps and vulnerabilities”, the President of the UN General Assembly said on Monday. Speaking at the High-level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity (FACTI) for Achieving the 2030 Agenda, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande warned that gaps, or the illegal siphoning off of government revenues, “have real consequences in all countries”. The […]
Humanitarian assistance needs to be scaled up significantly to more than a million people displaced by fighting in northwest Syria, a senior UN aid official said on Monday, amid reports that children are freezing to death on the Turkish border. “People are traumatized and frightened and urgently need better access to shelter, food, sanitation, basic […]
Many parts of the world can expect above average temperatures in the coming months even without the presence of an El Niño event to drive warming, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday. The UN agency published its latest update on El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a naturally occurring phenomenon in the equatorial Pacific linked to heavy […]