Category Archives: United Nations

Rohingya crisis: UN investigates its ‘dysfunctional’ conduct in Myanmar

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Exclusive: Inquiry follows claims it ignored warning signs before alleged Rohingya genocide

The UN has launched an inquiry into its conduct in Myanmar over the past decade, where it has been accused of ignoring warning signs of escalating violence prior to an alleged genocide of the Rohingya minority.

UN sources have confirmed to the Guardian that the initially hesitant UN secretary general, António Guterres, decided to proceed with the investigation after a “build-up in pressure” within the organisation.

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Trump’s UN ambassador pick, Heather Nauert, withdraws from consideration

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Former Fox News host says she is not going ahead with appointment for family reasons

The state department says Donald Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations, Heather Nauert, has withdrawn.

The department released a statement on Saturday evening Washington time saying Nauert had withdrawn and another nominee would be announced “soon”.

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Condom handouts in schools prevent disease without encouraging sex

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UN study finds misgivings over impact of condom distribution in secondary schools are misplaced

Making condoms available to teenagers at school does not make them more promiscuous – but neither does it reduce teenage pregnancy rates.

According to a major review by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), giving out condoms in secondary schools does not increase sexual activity, or encourage young people to have sex at an earlier age.

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Saudi crown prince wanted to go after Jamal Khashoggi ‘with a bullet’ – report

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US media quotes intelligence sources who intercepted a conversation between Mohammed bin Salman and an aide in 2017

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince told a senior aide he would go after Jamal Khashoggi “with a bullet” a year before the dissident journalist was killed inside the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate, according to a US media report.

US intelligence understood that Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s 33-year-old de facto ruler, was ready to kill the journalist, although he may not have literally meant he planned to shoot him, according to the New York Times ($).

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Yemen war: UN anchors ship off Red Sea port for ‘neutral ground’ talks

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Vessel moored near Hodeidah hosts meetings with Yemen government delegates and Houthi rebels

Yemen peace talks have been held onboard a UN-chartered boat anchored in the Red Sea in an attempt to find a neutral venue acceptable to both sides.

Patrick Cammaert, a retired Dutch general and head of the UN mission in Yemen, chaired the meeting on the ship moored off the port city of Hodeidah. Houthi rebel military officials had refused to meet in government-held areas in southern Hodeidah, citing security fears.

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Hodeidah residents fear Yemen violence will rupture ceasefire

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Houthi fighters resume planting landmines and aid workers say families are sifting through rubbish for food

Residents and aid workers in the besieged Yemeni city of Hodeidah fear that growing violence in the city will rupture the fragile ceasefire, despite insistences from the UN that both sides remain committed to negotiating the end of the four-year-old civil war.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in control of the city sparked fears of escalation this week after UAE foreign minister Anwar Gargash said it struck 10 Houthi training camps elsewhere in the country in retaliation for what he said was a spike in Houthi violations of the truce.

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Djibouti: scores feared dead after two migrant boats overturn

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Coastguard warns death toll will rise, as UN reveals six migrants die at sea each day

Scores of people are feared to have drowned off the coast of Djibouti after two migrant boats capsized, amid new warnings from the UN that six people a day die on maritime smuggling routes to Europe and elsewhere.

According to the International Organization for Migration, the alarm was raised over the latest incident after two survivors were recovered. As the search for more survivors continued, the IOM said on Wednesday that 38 people had been confirmed dead.

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Indonesia to let UN workers into West Papua as violence continues

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UNHCHR wants access after Indonesian military crackdown in response to guerrilla attack

Indonesia has agreed in principle to allow the UN office of the human rights commissioner into West Papua amid continuing violence in the region.

The long-running low-level insurgency violently escalated late last year, after West Papuan guerrillas attacked a construction site in Nduga, killing at least 17 people they claimed were Indonesian military but who Jakarta insists were civilian workers.

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UN court judge quits The Hague citing political interference

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Christoph Flügge warns over ‘shocking’ moves by Trump administration and Turkey

A senior judge has resigned from one of the UN’s international courts in The Hague citing “shocking” political interference from the White House and Turkey.

Christoph Flügge, a German judge, claimed the US had threatened judges after moves were made to examine the conduct of US soldiers in Afghanistan.

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Yemen ceasefire: Houthi retreat suffers setback, says UN envoy

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Plans for prisoner exchanges have also not gone to plan, says Martin Griffiths

Deadlines for a retreat of Houthi troops in Yemen, agreed in talks last month, have had to be delayed, the UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has said. He also conceded plans for prisoner exchanges have not gone to plan.

Griffiths also had to deny that the retired general Patrick Cammaert, appointed by the UN to implement the ceasefire in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, had quit due to disagreements with Griffiths’s team.

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UN executions expert to visit Turkey to lead Khashoggi inquiry

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Investigation comes as Saudi efforts to normalise relations with west move on to Davos

A UN expert on executions is to travel to Turkey next week to lead an “independent international inquiry” into the death of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian journalist killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.

Agnes Callamard, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said she would evaluate the circumstances of the crime and “the nature and the extent of states’ and individuals’ responsibilities for the killing”. She will report on the findings from her five-day visit to the UN human rights council in June.

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UK gives £2.5m to help salvage Yemen ceasefire

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Funding comes as UN officials fear cessation of hostilities in Hodeidah might soon collapse

The UN’s increasingly fraught attempt to salvage a ceasefire in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah that could lead to a wider peace across the war-torn country is to be shored up by extra money from the UK to support the civilian administration of the city.

The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced an initial extra £2.5m funding on Tuesday amid signs that the UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, is struggling to gain agreement even on basic confidence-building measures such as prisoner swaps.

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Coups and murder: the sinister world of apartheid’s secret mercenaries

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A South African militia that claimed to be behind the murder of a UN chief was involved in deadly work across the continent, its members say

Keith Maxwell, the self-declared “commodore” of the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), liked to dress up on special occasions in the garish costume of a 18th-century admiral, with a three-cornered hat, brass buttons and a cutlass. Ordinary members of his organisation were expected to show up in crisp naval whites.

Gathered together in upmarket restaurants, or the quiet of the Wemmer Pan naval base in south-central Johannesburg, they had the air of eccentric history buffs. Maxwell talked about the group’s roots in a Napoleonic-era treasure-hunting syndicate, and told outsiders it was still focused on deep-sea exploration.

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Libya: reconciliation conference delay could fuel military solution

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Political process is being sabotaged by those who believe conflict is only option, says UN special envoy

Failure to hold a national reconciliation conference in Libya could open the path to those who want a military solution to the country’s divisions, Ghassan Salamé, the UN special envoy has warned.

The conference, which was due to be held this month, is intended to be a precursor to presidential and parliamentary elections this spring designed to end the splits that have paralysed the country ever since the ousting and killing of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

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Yemen ceasefire: new UN resolution seeks to save agreement

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Fresh resolution will increase UN monitors overseeing Hodeidah deal

The UN has tried to prevent the collapse of the ceasefire agreement in Yemen by endorsing a fresh security council resolution urgently increasing the number of monitors overseeing the deal in Hodeidah, the strategic port that lies at the heart of the three-year civil war.

The resolution, drafted by the UK, extends the UN monitoring role for a further six months and increases the number of monitors to as many as 75 people. UN personnel are likely to be transferred from Djibouti to Hodeidah.

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Man accused of shooting down UN chief: ‘Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to…’

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Exclusive research reveals that a British-trained Belgian mercenary admitted the killing of Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961

Jan van Risseghem was only a teenager when his mother ordered him to flee Nazi-occupied Belgium for her native England with his brother Maurice. After hiding in a convent, and an epic journey across the war-torn continent, they reached safety in Portugal, then took a ship north.

Once in England, the pair signed up with the Belgian resistance, and with the help of an uncle enrolled for flight training with the RAF, a decision that shaped not just their war, but the rest of their lives.

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Rahaf al-Qunun lands in Toronto after long journey to safety

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Saudi teen was granted asylum by Canada after flying to Thailand to escape her family

The Saudi woman who barricaded herself in a Thai hotel room in a desperate attempt to flee abuse landed in Canada on Saturday, capping a tumultuous and uncertain journey towards safety.

Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun arrived in Toronto, the country’s largest city. As she entered the airport’s arrivals area, she was accompanied by Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, who has been a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia’s jailing of female dissidents.

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Rahaf al-Qunun: Labor says Saudi refugee should be resettled in Australia

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Bill Shorten urges Scott Morrison to accept Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun now that the UN has validated her refugee claim

Labor has said the Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun should be resettled in Australia now that her refugee claim had been validated.

The party’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, told ABC radio on Thursday Bill Shorten had written to Scott Morrison urging him to accept Qunun.

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Rahaf al-Qunun: Saudi teenager given refugee status by the UN

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Australia to consider asylum request after home affairs minister says she would not get ‘special treatment’

Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun has been found to be a refugee by the United Nations, and the Australian government will now consider her asylum request, according to the Department of Home Affairs.

The 18-year-old woman barricaded herself in a Bangkok airport hotel room on Sunday to prevent her forcible return to Saudi Arabia, where she claims her family will kill her because she has renounced Islam.

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Oxfam condemns EU over ‘inhumane’ Lesbos refugee camp

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Violence so bad that women wear nappies at night to avoid leaving tents, report says

The EU has been strongly criticised over conditions in Greece’s largest refugee camp, where Oxfam reported women are wearing nappies at night for fear of leaving their tents to go to the toilet.

The British-based NGO described the increasingly dangerous state of the EU-sponsored Moria camp on the island of Lesbos, where a 24-year-old man from Cameroon was found dead in the early hours of Tuesday as temperatures fell below freezing.

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