Live ammunition reportedly used against widespread protests in Iran – UN human rights office. Reports indicating that dozens of people have been killed in protests across Iran – some by live ammunition - are of deep concern, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said on Tuesday.
Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) launched a report recognizing that more than seven million children worldwide are suffering in various types of child-specific institutions, immigration detention centres, police custody, prisons and other places of detention.
Irradiated pests set for mass release in bid to make mosquito-borne disease a thing of the past. With more than half the world now at risk from mosquito-transmitted dengue fever, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN has taken the lead on a global effort to eradicate the disease – and many others – by measuring the impact of releasing millions of sterilized pests across several continents, it announced on Thursday.
As Australia’s “catastrophic” and deadly wildfire emergency continues, UN weather experts on Tuesday echoed Government warnings for people to remain vigilant in the face of the fast-moving threat and tinderbox conditions. In Geneva, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) noted that dozens of fires are raging in eastern New South Wales and southeast Queensland, amid reports that three people lost their lives in the fires at the weekend.
In a statement read by her spokesperson Rupert Colville today in Geneva, raised concern continuing reports of deaths and injuries resulting from the use of forces security forces against demonstrators, as well as deliberate killings by armed elements in Iraq.
Syrian Constitutional Committee agrees to continue discussions, says UN negotiator. UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen announced on Friday in Geneva that initial discussions on a new foundational document for the war-torn country by its opposing parties have been “successful” and will resume in two weeks.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians at risk in Syria amid ongoing violence in northeast and northwest. Almost daily violence targeting built-up areas and health facilities in Syria continues to threaten civilians there, UN rights experts and humanitarians said on Friday.
Ongoing violence in Cameroon’s northwest and southwest has created a fast-growing humanitarian emergency now affecting some 1.9 million people, a “15-fold increase since 2017”, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.
The UN Migration Agency appealed on Friday for the immediate liberation of a volunteer and child who remain missing since a gun battle in South Sudan at the weekend that claimed the lives of three agency workers.
United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Mr. Geir O. Pedersen, Syrian Constitutional Committee Co-Chairs Mr. Ahmad Kuzbari from the Government & Mr. Hadi Albahra from the opposition. Work on drafting a new foundational text for war-torn Syria officially began at the UN in Geneva on Wednesday with representatives from the Government of Syria and the opposition sitting face to face and preparing to discuss the country’s future for the first time in the more than eight-year conflict.
The people of Indian-Administered Kashmir continue to be deprived of numerous basic freedoms, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday, before urging the Indian authorities “to unlock the situation”.
Forty-eight hours before a 150-member Constitutional Committee for Syria meets for the first time in Geneva to try to agree on a new foundational text for the war-ravaged country, UN Special Envoy Geir O. Pedersen on Monday repeated his call for a nationwide ceasefire and the release of prisoners to build trust between belligerents.
Most of the Syrian refugees come from cides and villages from northeast Syria and have witnessed explosions and shelling. “Three out of four are women and children and there are unaccompanied children among these arrivals,” Andrej Mahecic, a spokesperson for the UNHCR told journalists today in Geneva.
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“The reasons behind these protests are complex and varied, and it is important not to come to sweeping conclusions,” said Ravina Shamdasani spokesperson for the Office of the UN high Commissioner for Human Rights, commenting on protests and unrest around the world.
At the United Nations briefing today in Geneva Ravina Shamdasani spokesperson for the Office of the UN high Commissioner for Human Rights, announced that a team of three from the UN Human Rights Office is due to visit Ecuador from 20 October to 8 November to look into allegations of human rights violations and abuses committed in the country in the context of the recent protests. The mission will be conducted at the invitation of the Government of Ecuador.
Shelling and clashes in northern Syria on the border with Turkey continue to cause hundreds of people to flee, the UN said, despite a cessation of hostilities deal between Turkish forces and Syrian-backed Kurdish military
Amid ongoing fighting in northern Syria and disturbing reports that extrajudicial killings have been streamed online, the United Nations and their partners are continuing to deliver humanitarian supplies to tens of thousands of people displaced by the violence, UN agencies stressed on Tuesday.
Airstrikes and a ground offensive by Turkey in northern Syria against Kurdish forces have left civilians dead and forced tens of thousands to flee, UN agencies said on Friday, amid fears of another “humanitarian catastrophe” in the war-torn country. UNTV CH
Efforts to eradicate the deadly Ebola epidemic in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are proving successful but “now we have to kill the virus”, the UN health agency WHO said on Thursday. UNTV CH
Less than 30 days before the newly-formed Constitutional Committee for Syria meets in Geneva to try to agree on a new foundational text, as one of the building blocks for lasting peace in the war-ravaged country, UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen acknowledged that progress depends on overcoming several obstacles, from the release of prisoners, to a reduction in violence and insecurity
STORYLINE The death of a Sudanese man in Libya who was shot after being returned to shore by the coastguard has been condemned by UN humanitarian agencies, who on Friday reiterated their call for the war-torn country’s migrant detention centres to close.
In her first Press conference at the Palais des Nations, Tatiana Valovaya, a Russian national, highlighted the significance of her appointment as the first woman to lead the UN’s principal European headquarters, both symbolically and in terms of what she hoped to achieve.
A surge in “deliberate” attacks against students, teachers and schools in West and Central Africa has led to a tripling in school closures in the last year and left almost two million youngsters “robbed of an education”, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday.