Author: News Desk

“There is now a genuine opportunity to help Syrians move from survival towards recovery,” said Assistant Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs Indrika Ratwatte, on behalf of UN relief chief Tom Fletcher.  “This moment requires ambition anchored in realism: sustained humanitarian action, political will and investment are essential to help Syrians move beyond emergency assistance and rebuild […]

Aid agencies are doing what they can to help, including by identifying dangerously malnourished children in sparsely populated “ghost villages” where those who can leave do so, said Olga Cherevko from the UN aid coordination office, OCHA.  But with nearly 22 million people in need across Afghanistan and the UN’s $1.7 billion appeal only 14 per cent funded, life is “becoming impossible” in remote areas, the agency warns.   Survival strategy  Water scarcity is the main cause of strife for villagers in Bamyan province who struggle, far from Afghanistan’s major cities.   “This particular village that I went to, […]

  Some 17 million people live on 4,000 islands across the EU, while 95 million people – one fifth of the EU population – live along EU coastlines across 22 EU countries. Both communities are vital assets to our economy but face several challenges: climate change, economic sustainability and growth, and overtourism, to name but a few. The European Commission has presented its first-ever, tailor-made […]

Yet for the past 20 years, the UN Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) has quietly been helping countries to avoid violence, recover from conflict and build more peaceful futures for their citizens. Today, it’s the UN’s main vehicle for investing in peace before crises spiral out of control. As the UN marks its first ever peacebuilding week, […]

Held online with participants from around the world, the discussion – Art Remembers: Culture as Witness and Prevention – explored how creative expression can either normalize hatred or help defuse it. Participants spoke through their expertise in the trade in enslaved Africans and slavery, the Holocaust, the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and […]

Malaria wasn’t on Masaki Umeda’s mind when his drone startup, SORA Technology, launched in 2020 in Nagoya, Japan. Back then, he and his colleagues were focused on getting medical supplies to hard-to-reach parts of Africa but, after talking to health ministries, they realised their AI-powered solutions would be more useful in the fight against the […]

The DRC now has more than 780 confirmed cases and 180 deaths, while Uganda has recorded 19 confirmed cases, including two deaths. On the ground, the response has expanded considerably. Some 400 beds are now available and four laboratories are operational.  Two of them alone can process nearly 1,000 samples a day. Yet despite this […]

In a statement on Saturday, Council members voiced concern over the imminent risk of mass atrocities and demanded that the RSF immediately halt its assault on the city, capital of North Kordofan state. The Council also expressed deep concern over continued violence across Sudan, where the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF have been […]

The initiative comes “at a time when securing the sustainability of news media is more urgent than ever to protect the future of journalism and safeguard information integrity,” the agency said.  The text under consultation outlines disruptions to the media landscape, including decreased funding for public-interest journalism, the contraction or closure of local and community news organisations, and other challenges that indicate “a fundamental and ongoing change in the structure of the […]