Category Archives: United Nations

Reduce methane or face climate catastrophe, scientists warn

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Exclusive: IPCC says gas, produced by farming, shale gas and oil extraction, playing ever-greater role in overheating planet

Cutting carbon dioxide is not enough to solve the climate crisis – the world must act swiftly on another powerful greenhouse gas, methane, to halt the rise in global temperatures, experts have warned.

Leading climate scientists will give their starkest warning yet – that we are rushing to the brink of climate catastrophe – in a landmark report on Monday. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish its sixth assessment report, a comprehensive review of the world’s knowledge of the climate crisis and how human actions are altering the planet. It will show in detail how close the world is to irreversible change.

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UN criticises UK for failure to redress colonial-era landgrab in Kenya

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Two clans brutally evicted to make way for tea plantations owned by white settlers are seeking reparations for rights violations

The British government has been criticised by the UN for a lack of resolution over colonial-era crimes committed in Kenya.

Six UN special rapporteurs have written to the government expressing concern over its failure to provide “effective remedies and reparations” to the Kipsigis and Talai peoples.

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If education is such a great investment, it deserves serious international backing

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The World Bank and IMF should step in to finance a recovery of children’s learning chances devastated by the pandemic

“Education,” wrote Nelson Mandela, “is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” One wonders what he would have made of the response to the education crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. A crisis threatening to derail social and economic progress, trapping millions of children in poverty. The UN secretary general has warned of a “generational catastrophe”, yet the international response has been marked by staggering complacency.

That lack of concern was on public display at last week’s Global Education Summit in London. Fresh from cutting UK aid to education by 40%, Boris Johnson – a self-styled champion for universal girls’ education – opened proceedings by declaring that education was “the single best investment we can make in the future of humanity”.

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UN compound attacked in Herat city, western Afghanistan

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Identity of assailants unknown, but Taliban fighters are known to have penetrated city after US withdrawal

The main UN compound in the capital of the western Afghan province of Herat was attacked by “anti-government elements” on Friday and at least one security guard was killed, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said.

The attack, involving rocket-propelled grenades and guns, happened hours after Taliban fighters penetrated deep into Herat city, and heavy clashes with Afghan security forces took place near the UNAMA provincial headquarters, officials said.

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Myanmar could become Covid ‘super-spreader’ state, says UN expert

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Special rapporteur urges security council to call for ceasefire amid fears Covid will spread across wider region

Myanmar is at risk of becoming a super-spreader Covid state that fuels outbreaks across the region, the UN special rapporteur for the country has warned as he urged the security council to call for a ceasefire.

The south-east Asian country is facing its most severe outbreak yet, on top of a deep political and economic crisis brought about by the military coup in February. Its vaccination programme has ground to a standstill, testing has collapsed, and government hospitals are barely functioning.

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‘No parallels’: 2,300-year-old solar observatory awarded Unesco world heritage status

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Chankillo in Peru features 13 stone towers built in 250 to 200 BC that functioned as a calendar by marking the rising and setting arcs of the sun

The oldest solar observatory in the Americas has been awarded Unesco world heritage status and dubbed “a masterpiece of human creative genius”.

The 2,300-year-old archaeological ruin Chankillo which lies in a desert valley in northern Peru was one of 13 new global sites added to the list of cultural monuments.

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Afghanistan civilian casualty figures at record high, UN says

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Report reveals ‘acute rise’ in deaths and injuries since 1 May as Taliban exploit departure of foreign troops

Record numbers of civilians have been killed and injured in Afghanistan in intense fighting since 1 May, when international forces began their final drawdown and the Taliban launched a major offensive.

The heavy toll so far comes largely from battles in rural areas, according to the UN. If the conflict were to spill into more densely populated towns and cities, the consequences could be catastrophic, it says in its report, The Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict.

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Unesco urged not to give heritage status to Thai park amid claims of Indigenous abuses

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UN human rights experts decry arrests and evictions of ethnic Karen from Kaeng Krachan national park

UN human rights experts have urged Unesco not to grant World Heritage Site status to a national park in Thailand, where they said Indigenous people are being arrested and evicted from their traditional lands.

The UN experts said in a statement: “This is an important precedent-setting case, and may influence policies on how Indigenous peoples’ rights are respected in protected areas across Asia.

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Stonehenge may be next UK site to lose world heritage status

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Britain is eroding global reputation for conserving its historic assets, culture bodies are warning

The UK is eroding its global reputation for conserving its “unparalleled” historic assets, culture bodies have warned, with Stonehenge expected to be next in line to lose its coveted World Heritage status after Liverpool.

Related: Unesco strips Liverpool of its world heritage status

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Unesco strips Liverpool of its world heritage status

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UN body says years of development have caused ‘irreversible loss’ to historic value of Victorian docks

Liverpool has been stripped of its coveted world heritage status after Unesco blamed years of development for an “irreversible loss” to the historic value of its Victorian docks.

The UN’s heritage body concluded at a meeting in China on Wednesday that the “outstanding universal value” of Liverpool’s waterfront had been destroyed by new buildings, including Everton football club’s new £500m stadium.

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Alarm grows over migrants’ hunger strike in Brussels

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Belgian government under pressure to offer residence permits to hundreds of migrants on hunger strike

The Belgian government is under pressure to offer residence permits to several hundred migrants, some of whom are “between life and death” after a weeks’ long hunger strike in Brussels.

Undocumented migrants have been on hunger strike in a central Brussels church and university buildings for nearly 60 days in an attempt to secure residency papers.

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Chinese Unesco official defends plan to list Great Barrier Reef as ‘in danger’

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Tian Xuejun rejects Australia’s ‘groundless accusations’ that China influenced the finding to score political points

The Chinese host of a United Nations world heritage committee has defended a proposal to label the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”, and rejected Australian government suspicion that China influenced the finding for political reasons.

It came as the Morrison government sought to use a new report by Australia’s marine science agency to argue there had been widespread coral recovery on the reef.

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Almost one in three globally go hungry during pandemic – UN

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Big leap in malnutrition during Covid, with fifth of children now believed to be stunted, report warns

The number of people who did not have enough food to eat rose steeply during the Covid-19 pandemic to include almost a third of the world, according to a new UN report published on Monday.

Five UN agencies said the number of people without access to healthy diets grew by 320 million last year to nearly 2.37 billion people– more than the increases in the previous five years combined.

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‘It will be a catastrophe’: fate of Syria’s last aid channel rests in Russia’s hands

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Possible veto of Bab al-Hawa UN aid crossing could halt the flow of vital food and health supplies to 3.4 million people

Just over half a mile away from the Bab al-Hawa border crossing connecting Syria and Turkey a 6th-century triumphal arch still stands, the remains of a Roman road stretching straight as an arrow on either side. For millennia this part of the world has been a crossroads of trade, culture and history. Today, it’s more important than ever.

Bab al-Hawa is Syria’s last lifeline, through which vital UN aid supplies for 3.4 million people living in the war-torn north-west of the country arrive. But before 10 July, the security council must vote in New York on whether to keep the aid flowing. What might seem like an obvious decision to outsiders is actually far from certain: Russia may use its veto power as a permanent member of the council to close the UN’s last access point, as it has managed to do with the other three aid crossings.

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Edward Mortimer obituary

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Speechwriter for Kofi Annan at the United Nations who drew on his experience as a commentator for British newspapers

In 1998 Edward Mortimer, who has died aged 77, joined the staff of the UN secretary general Kofi Annan as chief speechwriter and later director of communications. Since the UN’s foundation at the end of the second world war, its leadership had often lacked breadth and depth of vision, with the exception of the eight years under the Swede Dag Hammarskjöld until his death in a plane crash in Africa in 1961.

Like him, Annan, who was from Ghana, believed that the UN represented more than the sum of its member states, and could act as a prime mover in undertaking initiatives. Now, once more, the words of the secretary general mattered, moved, provoked and were remembered, and Mortimer had a key role in making that happen.

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‘I didn’t eat for days’: hunger stalks Venezuelan refugees

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Colombian health workers struggling to cope as malnutrition and dirty water ravage new arrivals in Maicao’s swelling shanty towns

A seemingly endless lake of cardboard and tin shacks surrounds the perimeter of a former airport runway in Colombia’s desert-like city of Maicao. Known locally as La Pista, the area is home to more than 2,000 families, and is one of 44 informal settlements to have emerged around the city in the past two years.

The old airport has become a landing strip for desperate migrants and bi-national indigenous Wayuu people fleeing the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the basic essentials of life are hard to come by.

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Malawi Pride and press freedoms in Palestine: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia

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Over 400,000 people in Ethiopia’s Tigray now in famine, UN warns

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Another 1.8 million people are on the brink, officials say, and 33,000 children are severely malnourished

Top UN officials have warned the Security Council that more than 400,000 people in Ethiopia’s Tigray are now in famine and that there was a risk of more clashes in the region despite a unilateral ceasefire by the federal government.

After six private discussions on Friday, the Security Council held its first public meeting since fighting broke out in November between government forces, backed by troops from neighbouring Eritrea, and TPLF fighters with Tigray’s former ruling party.

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Libya election plans in chaos as UN accused of breaching mandate

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Body set up to choose roadmap to elections beset by divisions with process described as ‘out of control’

Efforts to set the terms for presidential and parliamentary elections in Libya on 24 December are mired in chaos, as UN officials are accused of breaching their mandate by facilitating efforts to prevent them going ahead.

The UN admitted it was facing difficult splits among the 75-strong body it set up last year to choose an interim government and agree the roadmap to the elections.

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