“Together we can achieve what neither organization can achieve on its own,” she said, presenting the UN Secretary-General’s latest report on the important collaboration. Recent strains on multilateralism have seen trust in institutions and processes sorely tested, most recently by the uneven response to the COVID-19 crisis, she said. “Defiance of international law and the…
Senior officials with the UN Investigative Team promoting accountability for ISIL crimes, UNITAD, presented some of their findings to Member States meeting at UN Headquarters in New York. For the past five years, UNITAD has been gathering evidence of crimes committed during ISIL’s self-proclaimed caliphate from June 2014 to December 2017, which could be used…
A man fishes with seine nets in Quang Ngai province, Viet Nam. The goal is to improve “ocean literacy”, according to the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea of the Office of Legal Affairs (DOALOS), who organized the event. Coupled with information on ocean health and the Sustainable Development Goals…
Tom Andrews, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, insisted that current conditions there were “anything but conducive” for the return of Rohingya refugees. Death trap He stressed that the very generals who had launched “genocidal” attacks against the Rohingya, causing hundreds of thousands to flee the country, were now…
Olivier de Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and Attiya Waris, Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, have welcomed the proposed New York Taxpayer and International Debt Crises Prevention Act, which is currently under discussion. They urged lawmakers to adopt the draft bill, which compels private creditors to participate in…
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for greater action to protect oceans in his message to mark World Oceans Day on Thursday. “The ocean is the foundation of life. It supplies the air we breathe and food we eat. It regulates our climate and weather. The ocean is our planet’s greatest reservoir of biodiversity,” he…
Homes have been flooded, forcing many to leave, and access to water, specifically clean water, is emerging as a major challenge. In an interview with UN News, International Organization for Migration (IOM) spokesperson Olivia Headon, speaking from Kyiv, said the agency along with other humanitarian partners, had been rushing clean water supplies to areas that…
Ambassadors were briefed by Christian Ritscher, Special Adviser and Head of the UN Investigative Team to promote accountability for these crimes, UNITAD, established five years ago. The Islamist group declared a self-styled caliphate across parts of Iraq and northern Syria in 2014, before being militarily defeated and driven from Iraq in December 2017. Commitment stronger…
Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report, from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the UN Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO), warns that current efforts are not enough to achieve the SDG 7 on time. There has been some progress on specific elements…
Water from the reservoir of the Kakhovka dam is also used to cool the nearby Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant (ZNPP), Europe’s largest, which has been under constant threat since being occupied by Russian forces early in the conflict. The UN Office in Ukraine tweeted that “thousands of people in Ukraine are in peril” following the major…
