Member countries of the UN World Health Organization (WHO), on the final day of the seventy-seventh World Health Assembly, adopted important amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), including defining a “pandemic emergency” as well as pledging improved access to medical products and financing. These steps will help ensure comprehensive, robust systems are in place…
What exactly is a dignity kit? On the heels of Menstrual Hygiene Day, marked annually on 28 May, here are five fast facts: 1. What’s a dignity kit? Responding to emergencies, UN agencies act fast to reach people in need, including the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA. Part…
Right now, the UN observes 218 international days (and counting)! The tradition started long before the UN’s inception in 1945, but it didn’t take long for the Organization and its growing membership to embrace designated days as a powerful advocacy tool. Check out this classic video from 2017 on the occasion of the International Day of Happiness,…
The annual AI for Good Summit has been described as the leading UN platform promoting this technology to advance health, climate, gender, inclusive prosperity, sustainable infrastructure, and other global development priorities. Frederic Werner, Head of Strategic Engagement at the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) underscored the need to develop standards to combat misinformation and deepfakes. “You…
The alert from the World Health Organization (WHO) follows the finding that more than four in five children “did not eat for a whole day at least once in the three days” ahead of a food insecurity survey. Hunger snapshot “These are children under five who are not getting food all day,” said WHO spokesperson Dr. Margaret…
At 10:45 PM local time on 27 May, the DPRK, also known as North Korea, conducted what it described as “the launch of reconnaissance satellite Malligyong-1-1 aboard the new-type satellite carrier rocket” from the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. According to the DPRK, the launch failed “due to the air blast of the new-type satellite carrier…
Allegations of responsibility point to both armed groups and State actors. “While armed groups are presumed responsible for the vast majority of incidents and victims and should be held accountable, I am also deeply disturbed that security and defence forces and their auxiliaries, the Volontaires pour la défense de la patrie, allegedly carried out wanton…
Only three field hospitals are operating in Rafah in southern Gaza, one of which is only functioning partially, and all of these facilities are overwhelmed and undersupplied, OCHA said, with the seven-month-long war severely impacting civilians and the infrastructure they depend on for healthcare. The UN humanitarian aid agency said the Malnutrition Stabilisation Centre in…
Matthew Hollingsworth, WFP Country Director in Palestine, warned that with limited access to the south “we will no doubt see what we saw happen in the north in the first months of the war”. Mr. Hollingsworth recently spent 10 days in Gaza. Speaking from Jerusalem, he told journalists in New York that people in the…
In a bleak assessment of the dire situation in Sudan where conflict is in its second year, the heads of 19 global humanitarian organizations issued an alert that further obstacles to providing aid “rapidly and at scale” will mean that “more people will die”. UN aid coordination office OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told reporters in…
