Category Archives: United Nations

Israel seeking to close down Unrwa, says agency’s chief after school bombing

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Philippe Lazzarini says closure would have ‘devastating consequences’ and calls for investigation into deadly strike

A campaign is under way to drive the UN relief agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, out of existence, its commissioner general has said, days after 18 people were killed when Israeli jets bombed an Unrwa school in Gaza.

Philippe Lazzarini said in an interview that the Israeli government was seeking to close down the agency, having failed to persuade western donors to stop funding it on the grounds of allegations about links between Unrwa staff and Hamas.

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Consumerism and the climate crisis threaten equitable future for humanity, report says

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The Earth Commission says hope lies in sustainable lifestyles, a radical transformation of global politics and fair distribution of resources

All of humanity could share a prosperous, equitable future but the space for development is rapidly shrinking under pressure from a wealthy minority of ultra-consumers, a groundbreaking study has shown.

Growing environmental degradation and climate instability have pushed the Earth beyond a series of safe planetary boundaries, say the authors from the Earth Commission, but it still remains possible to carve out a “safe and just space” that would enable everyone to thrive.

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Six UN aid workers among 18 killed in Israeli strike on Gaza school

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Unrwa says attack on school sheltering refugees in Nuseirat led to highest death toll among its staff in a single incident

Israel has bombed a UN school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza, killing at least 18 people, including the shelter manager and five other Unrwa staff.

The al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat is home to about 12,000 displaced people, mostly women and children, the UN said. It has been hit five times since the start of the war in Gaza.

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UN says lives of staff endangered in Israeli halt of Gaza polio vaccine convoy

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World body says two workers detained for questioning, live shots fired and vehicles damaged at checkpoint

Israeli soldiers halted a UN convoy involved in the recent polio vaccination drive in Gaza and detained two staff members for questioning, in an incident during which live shots were fired and vehicles damaged by a bulldozer, the UN has said.

Details of the incident, which occurred at the Al Rashid checkpoint, were revealed in a statement by the office of the UN humanitarian coordinator for Palestine, Muhannad Hadi, who said the lives of UN staff in the vehicles had been endangered.

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Aid agency insiders claim BBC ‘blocking’ Gaza humanitarian appeal

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Disasters Emergency Committee sources say BBC fears backlash from those supportive of Israel’s war with Hamas

The launch of a major humanitarian appeal for Gaza by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) is being delayed by the BBC, it has emerged.

The corporation said the appeal did not meet all the established criteria for a national appeal, but the possibility of broadcasting an appeal was “under review”. Other channels have agreed to broadcast an appeal.

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UN’s Gaza polio vaccination campaign reaches 189,000 children in first phase

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Unicef calls inoculations ‘rare bright spot’ in war, as minister appears to suggest Israel might eventually fully withdraw

The United Nations children’s agency has said that a polio vaccination campaign to inoculate more than 640,000 children in Gaza is surpassing expectations at the end of the first phase of the programme.

Describing the campaign as a “rare bright spot” in almost 11 months of war, Unicef said that 189,000 children had been reached so far as more than 500 teams were deployed across central Gaza this week.

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WHO delivers 1.2m polio vaccine doses to Gaza as pauses in fighting agreed

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Three-day humanitarian pauses in several areas planned to allow inoculation of more than 640,000 children

The World Health Organization has said it delivered 1.2m doses of polio vaccine to Gaza, with 400,000 more to follow, as part of an emergency campaign after the first case of the childhood disease in the war-hit coastal strip in quarter of a century.

The vaccinations, due to begin this weekend, will be accompanied by three-day pauses in the fighting in several areas of the territory to allow the inoculation of more than 640,000 children.

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UN food agency suspends operations in Gaza after car hit by gunfire at Israeli checkpoint

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World Food Programme says it is the first time that one of its vehicles has been directly shot at near a checkpoint despite having security clearance

The UN’s food agency has said it is pausing movement of its staff in Gaza “until further notice” after one of its vehicles was struck by gunfire at an Israeli military checkpoint.

Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), said of Tuesday’s incident: “This is totally unacceptable and the latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents that have endangered the lives of WFP’s team in Gaza.

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Gaza polio vaccine rollout hindered by Israeli evacuation orders, says UN

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Aid workers preparing to distribute medicine to children in effort to contain outbreak call for pause in fighting

The UN has said its ability to function in Gaza is being crippled by a flurry of Israeli evacuation orders, forcing Palestinians into ever smaller and more remote areas, days before a critical effort to contain a polio outbreak.

Aid workers warn that without a humanitarian pause, a vaccination drive due to begin this weekend could fail to reach enough children to stop the spread of the virus, which was detected there this month for the first time in 25 years. A baby has already been partly paralysed by the disease, and health experts have warned it could spread rapidly given the terrible sanitation and overcrowding in camps for Gaza’s exhausted, displaced population.

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‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public

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New vice and virtue restrictions offer ‘a distressing vision of Afghanistan’s future’, says UN

New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.

The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

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UK must curb rise in racist hate speech by politicians and public figures, UN says

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Review also highlights racial profiling in police practices, and failure to address legacies of colonialism and slavery

The UK must act to curb a sharp increase in the use of racist hate speech by British politicians and high-profile public figures, a UN body has said.

Ministers must “adopt comprehensive measures to discourage and combat racist hate speech and xenophobic discourse by political and public figures” and ensure that such cases are “effectively investigated and sanctioned”, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination recommended in a report.

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From ‘open hearts’ to closed borders: behind Sweden’s negative net immigration figures

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Record low asylum applications ‘surprising’ when global displacement is at all-time high, with aid agencies blaming fear and far-right rhetoric

Ten years ago the then prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt asked Swedes to “open your hearts” to refugees. Now the country’s migration minister is celebrating the fact Sweden has “negative net immigration”, with more people thought to be leaving the country than entering for the first time in more than half a century.

“The number of asylum applications is heading towards a historically low level, asylum-related residence permits continue to decrease and for the first time in 50 years Sweden has net emigration,” Maria Malmer Stenergard announced earlier this month.

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Gaza sees first polio case in 25 years as UN calls for mass vaccinations

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Highly infectious disease confirmed in 10-month-old as UN chief urges pauses in fighting to contain spread

Gaza has recorded its first polio case in 25 years, the Palestinian health ministry said on Friday, after the UN chief, António Guterres, called for pauses in the Israel-Hamas war to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children.

Tests in Jordan confirmed the disease in an unvaccinated 10-month-old from the central Gaza Strip, the health ministry in Ramallah said.

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Half a billion children live in areas with twice as many very hot days as in 1960s

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Unicef analysis also finds children in eight countries spend more than half the year in temperatures above 35C

Almost half a billion children are growing up in parts of the world where there are at least twice the number of extremely hot days every year compared with six decades ago, analysis by Unicef has found.

The analysis by the UN’s children’s agency examined for the first time data on changes in children’s exposure to extreme heat over the past 60 years.

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UN envoy calls Canada’s use of migrant workers ‘breeding ground for slavery’

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Tomoya Obokata’s report finds power imbalances and discriminatory practice exploits workers from global south

Canada’s reliance on temporary foreign workers is “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery”, a UN special rapporteur has warned, amid growing calls to overhaul the controversial program.

The damning report from the UN investigator Tomoya Obokata found that deep power imbalances and discriminatory practice in Canada cuts costs for companies but exploits against workers from the global south.

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‘Fierce repression’ of Venezuela election protests must end, UN rights team says

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Human rights investigators say ‘escalating’ crackdown has seen 23 deaths and over 100 children and teens detained

United Nations human rights investigators have urged Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, to halt the “fierce repression” being perpetrated by his security forces after last month’s allegedly stolen presidential election.

In a statement published two weeks after the 28 July vote, the UN’s fact-finding mission to Venezuela condemned Maduro’s “escalating” crackdown, during which more than 100 children and teens have been detained. The UN investigators said they had recorded 23 deaths, the vast majority caused by gunfire and nearly all young men.

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Nine Unrwa staff members ‘may have been involved’ in 7 October attack

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UN fires employees from Palestinian refugee agency following internal investigation into their role in the Hamas-led attack on Israel

The UN has fired nine staff members from its agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, after an internal investigation found they may have been involved in the Hamas-led 7 October attack against Israel.

The UN secretary general’s office announced the move in a brief statement on Monday. It did not elaborate on the Unrwa staffers’ possible role in the attack. It said the nine included seven staffers who were fired previously over the claims.

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UN calls for foreign security forces to be deployed faster to quash Haiti gang wars

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Armed gangs control much of Caribbean country’s capital with reports of 40 rape victims a day in areas, UN reports

The UN has called for the deployment of international security forces in Haiti to be accelerated after a report that at least 1,379 people were killed or wounded in gang warfare and 428 people kidnapped in the country between April and June this year.

“Service providers report receiving an average of 40 rape victims a day in some areas of the capital,” warns the new report from the UN’s office in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

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Colombian guerrillas withdraw threat to disrupt UN biodiversity summit

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Central General Staff militant group previously said Cop16 event scheduled for October in Cali ‘would fail’

A dissident rebel group has backed down from its threat to disrupt the UN biodiversity summit in Colombia later this year.

The Central General Staff (EMC), a guerrilla faction that rejected the country’s 2016 peace agreement, said on Wednesday it would order its militants not to target the Cop16 negotiations that are due to begin in Cali in October.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features.

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UK should stop arming Israel after ICJ advisory ruling, top lawyer says

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Exclusive: Philippe Sands KC says non-binding opinion will nevertheless be seen as ‘authoritative statement of law’

The UK should stop arming Israel in order to comply with the historic advisory opinion by the UN’s top court that member states should not “render aid or assistance” to the occupation of the Palestinian territories, a lawyer who represented Palestine has said.

In a broad and damning ruling published this month, the international court of justice (ICJ), found that Israel’s settlement policies and occupation of the territories were in breach of international law. It also said UN member states were under an obligation to neither recognise the occupation as lawful nor abet it.

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