Category Archives: United Nations

Debris from North Korean missile found in Kharkiv, say UN sanctions monitors

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Report to United Nations security council says remnants of Hwasong-11 violate arms export embargo on Russian ally

The debris from a missile that landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on 2 January was from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile, UN sanctions monitors told a security council committee in a report seen by Reuters.

In the 32-page report, the UN sanctions monitors concluded that “debris recovered from a missile that landed in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on 2 January 2024 derives from a DPRK Hwasong-11 series missile” and is in violation of the arms embargo on North Korea.

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Hamas ‘reviewing Israel’s latest Gaza ceasefire proposal’

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Islamist group release new video apparently showing two hostages as UN warns famine thresholds will be breached within six weeks

Hamas has said it is studying the latest Israeli counterproposal regarding a potential ceasefire in Gaza, a day after media reports said a delegation from Egypt had arrived in Israel in an attempt to jumpstart stalled negotiations.

The signs of renewed truce talks come as the UN warned that “famine thresholds in Gaza will be breached within the next six weeks” unless massive food assistance arrives.

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Gaza’s 37m tonnes of bomb-filled debris could take 14 years to clear, says expert

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Top UN demining official outlines scale of devastation as Egypt officials fly into Israel in attempt to revive ceasefire talks

Israel’s war in Gaza has created 37m tonnes of debris, much of it laced with unexploded bombs, which could take more than a decade to remove, a top UN demining official said.

Nearly seven months into the war, there is an average 300kg of rubble a square metre of land in Gaza, Pehr Lodhammar, the former United Nationals Mine Action Service chief for Iraq, told a news conference.

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Russia vetos UN resolution to prevent nuclear arms race in space

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Moscow described the security council resolution, which would have called on countries not to deploy weapons of mass destruction in outer space, a ‘dirty spectacle’

Russia has vetoed a UN security council resolution calling on all nations to prevent a dangerous nuclear arms race in outer space, describing it as “a dirty spectacle”.

The resolution, sponsored by the United States and Japan, would have called on all countries not to develop or deploy nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction in space, which are already banned under a 1967 international treaty.

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Germany to resume funding of Unrwa aid operations in Gaza

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Berlin restores ties with UN agency after review says Israel has provided no evidence of terrorist links

Germany has said it will restore cooperation and funding to Unrwa operations in the Gaza Strip after an independent review said Israel had not provided evidence to back up claims that hundreds of employees of the UN agency for Palestinians were members of terrorist organisations.

Berlin’s foreign and development ministries said in a joint statement on Wednesday that following Monday’s publication of the review, conducted by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, the German government would soon resume cooperation with the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa).

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At least 21 migrants dead after boat capsizes off coast of Djibouti

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Children among those killed in second fatal incident in two weeks close to the Horn of Africa, says UN agency

At least 21 people have died after a boat capsized off the coast of Djibouti, the UN’s migration agency has said.

It was the second fatal maritime accident in two weeks off the Horn of Africa nation, which lies on the perilous so-called eastern migration route from Africa to the Middle East.

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Humanitarian groups demand safe routes to UK after five deaths in Channel

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UN and Council for Europe add voices to outcry as more people drown within hours of ‘cruel’ Rwanda bill being passed

Humanitarian groups have called for new safe routes to Britain after five people died trying to cross the Channel within hours of ministers passing the controversial Rwanda bill.

A child and four adults drowned on Tuesday while trying to reach the UK in a boat from Wimereux, in France. More than 110 people were said to have been on board the vessel when it left the French coastline at 5am.

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UN rights chief ‘horrified’ by reports of mass graves at two Gaza hospitals

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Spokesperson says some bodies allegedly had their hands tied while others were bound and stripped

The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, has said he was “horrified” by reports of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies at two of Gaza’s largest hospitals.

Palestinian civil defence teams began exhuming bodies from a mass grave outside the Nasser hospital complex in Khan Younis last week after Israeli troops withdrew. A total of 310 bodies have been found in the last week, including 35 in the past day, Palestinian officials have said.

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Sunak claims there is ‘element of compassion’ to Rwanda policy because it is meant to stop dangerous Channel crossings – UK politics latest

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Prime minister says that deaths of five people attempting to cross the Channel shows need to stop boats and bill is intended to stop people smuggling

Rishi Sunak has said that the deaths of five people who were crossing the Channel in the early hours of this morning underlines the need to stop the boats.

Speaking to reporters on his plane to Poland, he argued that there was an “element of compassion” in his Rwanda policy because it is intended to stop people smuggling. He said:

There are reports of sadly yet more tragic deaths in the Channel this morning. I think that is just a reminder of why our plan is so important because there’s a certain element of compassion about everything that we’re doing.

We want to prevent people making these very dangerous crossings. If you look at what’s happening, criminal gangs are exploiting vulnerable people. They are packing more and more people into these unseaworthy dinghies.

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Israel still has no proof of Unrwa terrorist claims – but damage to aid agency is done

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Inquiry has not backed up allegations of ties to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which led to loss of $450m as people died in droves

Unsupported Israeli allegations about Unrwa links to terrorism led major donors to cut $450m in funding to the main humanitarian agency working in Gaza at a time when people there were dying in droves.

Three months later, the situation has only worsened with the onset of a human-made famine on top of the bombing, the collapse of healthcare, the lack of water and a rise in epidemics. And despite a rigorous inquiry by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, supported by three well-respected research institutes, there is still no evidence for the claim that significant numbers of Unrwa employees have Hamas or Islamic Jihad ties.

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Israel has yet to provide evidence of Unrwa staff terrorist links, Colonna report says

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Exclusive: review finds government yet to substantiate claims UN relief agency staff have ties to Hamas or Islamic Jihad

Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency Unrwa are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has said.

The Colonna report, which was commissioned by the UN in the wake of Israeli allegations, found that Unrwa had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees for vetting, and that “the Israeli government has not informed Unrwa of any concerns relating to any Unrwa staff based on these staff lists since 2011”.

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World leaders urge calm after Israeli drone strike on Iran ratchets up tension

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Tit-for-tat attacks have breached taboo of direct strikes on each other’s territory but Tehran has no ‘immediate’ plans to retaliate

World leaders urged calm on Friday after Israel conducted a pre-dawn drone sortie over Iran following a cycle of tit-for-tat attacks that crossed an important red line that has for decades held the Middle East back from a major regional conflict.

There were tentative hopes late on Friday that the apparent strike attempt against an airbase near the city of Isfahan was sufficiently limited to fend off the threat of a bigger Iranian response and an uncontrolled spiral of violence between a nuclear power and a state with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons quickly.

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US vetoes Palestinian request for full UN membership

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Washington blocks security council resolution supported by 12 member countries, with two abstentions including UK

The US has vetoed a Palestinian request to the United Nations security council for full UN membership, blocking the world body’s recognition of a Palestinian state.

The vote in the 15-member security council was 12 in favor, the US opposed and two abstentions, the UK and Switzerland.

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MPs vote to give smoking ban bill second reading – as it happened

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Rishi Sunak’s authority suffers blow as several Conservatives vote against bill, which clears first Commons hurdle with 383 votes to 67

At 12.30pm a transport minister will respond to an urgent question in the Commons tabled by Labour on job losses in the rail industry. That means the debate on the smoking ban will will not start until about 1.15pm.

Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is one of the Britons speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels starting today. The conference, which features hardline rightwingers from around the world committed to the NatCons’ ‘faith, flag and family’ brand of conservatism, is going ahead despite two venues refusing to host them at relatively short notice.

The current UK government doesn’t have the political will to take on the ECHR and hasn’t laid the ground work for doing so.

And so it’s no surprise that recent noises in this direction are easily dismissed as inauthentic.

Any attempt to include a plan for ECHR withdrawal in a losing Conservative election manifesto risks setting the cause back a generation.

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UN demands end to Israeli forces’ support of settler attacks on West Bank Palestinians

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UN human rights office expresses concern over escalating violence after deaths near Nablus over weekend

The UN and the UK have voiced grave concern over escalating violence in the West Bank, demanding that Israeli security forces “immediately” stop supporting settler attacks on Palestinians in the occupied territory.

The comments came hours after two Palestinian men were killed by Israeli settlers in a northern village south of Nablus in the latest violent attack involving settlers in the increasingly tense West Bank.

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Mexico calls on UN to expel Ecuador over embassy raid as tensions soar

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Ecuadorian police forced their way inside embassy in Quito to arrest former vice-president who was seeking asylum in Mexico

Mexico is demanding that the United Nations expel Ecuador from the world body as part of a complaint to the top UN court over a police raid last week on the Mexican embassy in Quito.

Tensions between Mexico and Ecuador have soared since late last week when Ecuadorian authorities forced their way into the diplomatic mission to arrest Ecuador’s former vice-president Jorge Glas who had been holed up there seeking asylum in Mexico.

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‘Right to freedom from torture’: UN experts urge the Gambia not to decriminalise FGM

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Repealing ban would mean return of ‘one of the most pernicious forms of violence committed against women and children’

A team of UN experts has urged Gambian lawmakers not to repeal a ban on female genital mutilation, saying such a move would set a dangerous global precedent.

In a letter dated 8 April and made public on Thursday, the experts, led by Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said allowing the unchecked return of “one of the most pernicious forms of violence committed against women and children” would violate their right to freedom from torture.

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Unrwa vital to avert starvation in Gaza, says agency official

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Comments by Sam Rose, of the UN body for Palestinian refugees, come amid fears Israel plans to squeeze agency out of Gaza

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees must remain “the backbone of any humanitarian response” for the 2 million people in Gaza if mass starvation is to be avoided, the Unrwa director of planning, Sam Rose, says.

Israel is continuing to impede Unrwa convoys to northern Gaza, where 300,000 people are facing famine, he said. “Our space is continuing to be squeezed at a time when the international community urgently needs to get as much assistance as possible to people in the north.”

Guardian Newsroom: Crisis in the Middle East
On Tuesday 30 April, 7-8.15pm GMT, join Devika Bhat, Peter Beaumont, Emma Graham-Harrison and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as they discuss the fast-developing crisis in the Middle East. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

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‘Hell on Earth’: famine nears in northern Gaza despite Israeli aid pledges

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Doctors describe rise in infections and amputations among dangerously malnourished patients

Every morning, starving mothers arrive at the doors of al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza desperately seeking baby formula. Many mothers of newborns are unable to breastfeed, the head of the hospital said, because they are so underfed.

Inside the hospital, where doctors are undergoing treatment for malnutrition alongside their patients, surgeons say they are carrying out increasing numbers of amputations owing to the effects of acute hunger.

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UN chief joins condemnation of Ecuadorian raid on Mexican embassy

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António Guterres voices ‘alarm’ as Latin American governments sharply criticise Quito’s move to arrest former vice-president

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has added his voice to a torrent of criticism of Ecuador’s decision to storm the Mexican embassy in Quito in order to arrest the former vice-president Jorge Glas.

“The secretary general is alarmed at the forced entry of Ecuadorian security forces into the premises of the Mexican embassy,” Guterres said through his spokesperson on Sunday, adding that violations of the sanctity of diplomatic and consular property “jeopardise the pursuit of normal international relations”.

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