Middle East

21 March 2024Humanitarian Aid After thirteen years of conflict in Syria, a continuing political stalemate threatens to prolong the suffering of millions and hinder efforts to bring about peace, the UN Special Envoy for the country said on Thursday. Briefing ambassadors at the UN Security Council, Geir Pedersen said that recent spike in violence, including airstrikes, rocket attacks and clashes between armed groups, underscored the urgent need for a political resolution. In addition...

Global perspective Human stories File photo of Catherine Colonna, Chair of the Independent Review Group on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). 20 March 2024UN Affairs UN Secretary-General António Guterres has received the interim findings of an independent panel conducting an assessment of UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinians, his office said on Wednesday in a note to correspondents. The review follows serious allegations regarding the alleged...

While ceasefire talks failed to end the five-month-long conflict that has killed nearly 32,000 Palestinians – most of them women and children – the goal of some youngsters living in the makeshift camp was simple. The children of Deir Al-Balah decided to lift their spirits in the face of ongoing war and celebrate the holy month of Ramadan, despite all the difficulties. Shahad is a displaced child who lives with her family in a makeshift shelter in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. ‘We...

With the release of the latest food security report from the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) on war-ravaged Gaza since December, World Food Programme (WFP) chief economist Arif Husain walked UN News through the process. When is famine declared? Famine is essentially a technical term, referring to a population that faces widespread malnutrition and hunger-related deaths due to a lack of access to food. “We say there is a famine when three conditions come together in a specific...

Briefing ambassadors at the UN Security Council, Hans Grundberg voiced his disappointment at the failure to achieve key milestones that ordinary Yemenis have been demanding, by Ramadan. “As I briefed last month, the mediation space has grown more complex. This continues to be the case,” he said. “Although we have tried to shield the peace process from regional developments since the war in Gaza, the reality is, and allow me to repeat myself, that what happens regionally impacts Yemen – and...

Ms. Boucly spoke to Khaled Mohamed from UN News as news emerged of fresh Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, and an UNRWA report that more children have been killed there in recent months than in four years of conflict worldwide. On Wednesday, the agency reported that at least one of its staffers had been killed and a further 22 injured when Israeli forces hit a food distribution centre in the eastern part of Rafah on the southern edge of the Strip. This interview has been edited for clarity and...

“Children are dying from hunger,” he said via videolink, as media reports indicate that at least 20 children have succumbed to starvation in the besieged and bombarded enclave, including most recently a 14-day-old baby. Calling for a plan to address this crisis, he said immediate needs would include using a military access road to northern Gaza for a minimum of 300 aid trucks every day. Hunger in the enclave has grown exponentially since the Israeli invasion began in October, triggered by...

Citing alarming examples in Aleppo, Grozny, Mariupol, Myanmar, Sudan and Gaza, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, said an “increasingly systematic, massive and arbitrary destruction of civilian housing and infrastructure” during too many conflicts around the world is in blatant violation of international human rights and humanitarian laws. “We have seen or are seeing such destruction in Aleppo, Grozny, Mariupol, Myanmar and now, in Gaza and parts of Sudan,”...

“The child deaths we feared are here,” Adele Khodr, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement issued on Sunday. At least 10 children have died from dehydration and malnutrition at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north in recent days, according to reports. Helplessness and despair Ms. Khodr warned that “there are likely more children fighting for their lives” in one of the few remaining hospitals in the enclave, and perhaps even more in the north who...

“Life is very difficult here,” hospital manager Dr. Haidar Al-Qudra told UN News. Currently, only 12 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are “partially functioning”, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), with the rest destroyed by Israel’s near constant bombardment of the enclave. As the war in Gaza enters its fifth month, Israeli forces continue to raid healthcare facilities, with Al Amal Hospital among the latest to endure a weeks-long deadly siege. Israel claims Hamas is operating in...