UN News - Global perspective Human stories

• After post-pandemic improvement, youth unemployment is rising again
  Frustrated by skyrocketing youth unemployment, among other issues, tens of thousands of Gen Z activists took to the streets of Nepal last year, demanding a stake in the country’s economic growth. The protest worked and the prime minister resigned.
• South Sudan: UN mission decries deadly attacks, works to calm tensions after ‘nothing but devastation’
  The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has condemned recent armed group attacks in Warrap state which reportedly left more than 60 civilians dead and 50 others injured. 
• Ebola deaths top 2,000 as scientists race to develop vaccine
  Local officials in the DR Congo (DRC) reported on Tuesday that deaths from the Ebola virus disease have surpassed 2,000, with half of that number in the last 20 days.
• World marks second warmest July on record
  As multiple regions contend with unbearable heat, drought, wildfires and other extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday underlined the crucial need for stronger forecasts and early warning systems to protect lives and livelihoods. 
• Security Council LIVE: Spotlight on Israeli settler violence in West Bank
  The Security Council held an open debate on Tuesday which is expected to address escalating Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinians and their property continue. UN News app users can follow here.
• Colombia earthquake: UN joins national response
  As earthquake rescue efforts across western Colombia continued on Tuesday, UN agencies said that they stood ready to help “with everything we've got”, in coordination with national authorities.
• Myanmar: UN investigators document deliberate military attacks on civilians
  Myanmar's military has carried out a sustained campaign of deliberate attacks on civilians – including airstrikes on homes, schools and camps for displaced people, alongside arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence – according to Human Rights Council-appointed investigators.
• Fighting deepens needs and fuels further displacement in Sudan
  Ongoing conflict, displacement and funding shortages continue to deepen needs in Sudan, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned on Monday, underscoring the need for greater civilian protection.
• Lebanon: UN peacekeepers count hundreds of Israeli strikes and incursions in a single weekend
  Israeli forces fired 455 projectiles into south Lebanon and breached Lebanese airspace 97 times between Friday and Sunday, the UN's peacekeeping mission in the country reported Monday – among the heaviest fire seen in months.
• UN offers support to Colombia after magnitude 7.4 earthquake kills dozens
  The UN offered its support to Colombia on Monday after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck the west of the country, killing at least 111 people and injuring at least 87, including several children, while leaving others trapped under the rubble and causing landslides and serious damage to homes and infrastructure.
• DR Congo: Ebola is killing people before they ever reach a doctor
  More than 1,900 people have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Ebola outbreak – and most of them never made it to a treatment centre. Between 60 and 70 per cent of deaths are happening in communities far from care, a gap that is now central to the World Health Organization's response. 
• Afghanistan: UN tells Taliban to open up on abuses committed by security forces
  Five years into Taliban rule, Afghans still have almost no way of knowing whether soldiers, police and morality officers who abuse their power ever face consequences – and that secrecy is corroding trust in the State, the UN said Monday.
• UN calls for urgent action to protect children from online information risks
  More than eight in 10 young people aged 15 to 24 worldwide are now online, and in low-income countries they outpace the rest of the population nearly two to one.
• Humanitarian aid warehouses come under attack in Ukraine
  Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine has left civilians vulnerable to repeated deadly attacks and humanitarian workers and key facilities being targeted and destroyed.
• Sudan: ‘It made me dream again’: The students refusing to let war stop their education
  Sarah Tekhlu was ready to give up on university. An Eritrean refugee, she had already been displaced once from Khartoum to Madani, then again to Port Sudan, as war tore through the country around her. Higher education, she had decided, was a luxury she could no longer afford to want.
• For Brazil’s Indigenous youth, visibility is resistance
  As climate change reshapes Indigenous territories across Brazil, a new generation is turning to culture and digital platforms to defend their lands and their future. 
• The Mediterranean’s own odyssey: An ecological treasure feels the strain
  More than 2,500 years after Homer’s epic was first told, Christopher Nolan's blockbuster retelling of The Odyssey has brought the journey back to big screens worldwide. But, behind the sweeping plot is another character facing an odyssey of its own: the Mediterranean Sea.
• ‘Sudan is losing another generation’ to war, Mohammed warns
  More than 1,000 days of war in Sudan have left millions of children out of school, displaced or exposed to grave violations, the UN Deputy Secretary-General said on Friday, calling for renewed action to end the conflict. 
• Peacock party takes pride of place in nod to decades of turbulent history
  In a new twist on panda diplomacy, UN Geneva welcomed five young peacocks to the Palace of Nations on Friday, a gift of India that preserves a tradition of keeping the stately birds in the grounds, that predates both the global body and its ill-fated predecessor, the League of Nations.
• Ebola in DR Congo: Childhood deaths rise; hopes raised over new vaccine
  More than 300 children have died in the Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN said on Friday, as health experts urged trials of the only vaccine against the disease to halt further spread of the rare Bundibugyo species.
• Food prices edged up in July amid heatwaves and energy price hikes
  The cost of key foods edged up last month as searing heatwaves and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty impacted energy prices around the world.
• ‘A clear violation’: Guterres deplores deadliest attack on Kyiv this year
  UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned on Wednesday the deadliest Russian strikes on Kyiv this year, which killed 17 people and caused extensive damage to civilian infrastructure overnight.
• Cuba: Independent experts condemn new US sanctions as humanitarian crisis deepens
  Independent UN human rights experts on Thursday condemned a fresh round of US sanctions against Cuba, calling them an attempt to force change on “a sovereign State through threats and coercion.”
• Ebola virus reaches displacement camps in DR Congo
  Agencies are on high alert amid reports that the rapidly spreading Ebola Bundibugyo virus species in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has infected 19 internally displaced people, killed five of them, according to the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR).
• ‘Wanton, intentional infliction of incredible pain’ by gangs in Haiti
  Gangs in Haiti continue to terrorise communities with the “wanton, intentional infliction of incredible pain” on people who often are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.