United Nations

Homicide rates are falling across much of the world, but organised crime is on the rise in many regions as criminal networks diversify into trafficking, migrant smuggling, and the exploitation of natural resources, a new UN report launched on Wednesday revealed. 

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has voiced concern over Malaysia’s decision to return 1,476 people to Myanmar amid an ongoing civil war and a dire human rights and humanitarian situation.

Four in five households in Lebanon struggle to afford basic necessities today, with children increasingly going without food, missing school and being pushed into work as conflict compounds years of economic crisis. "I wanted to buy clothes for my children, but I could not. I also wanted to enrol them in school, but I could not afford that either," said one father of four, cited on Wednesday by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The UN chief on Tuesday strongly condemned an airstrike that reportedly killed at least 50 people at a market in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and called for those responsible to be held to account.

Haji Mohammad Shafi spent 44 years in Pakistan before he was forced to leave. He sold everything he owned and returned to Afghanistan with his five children, arriving with almost nothing.

Food waste is helping to fuel global warming, one half-eaten sandwich at a time. 

Amid rising tensions, extreme weather impacts and strikes on nuclear infrastructure in war-torn Iran and Ukraine, UN Member States returned to the core issue of disarmament on Tuesday, closing out the General Assembly’s High-Level Week with calls for greater safeguards.

The Security Council met in New York on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Tuesday, where clashes between Government forces and M23 rebels continue in the east, despite a series of peace agreements. Ambassadors focused on ceasefire monitoring, rising tensions between the DRC and Rwanda and the country’s worst Ebola outbreak on record, which has killed more than 3,900 people.  

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), health workers fighting the country’s largest-ever Ebola outbreak are struggling to overcome critical challenges to patient care, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Tuesday.

Heavy fighting in Yemen is fuelling concerns of an uptick in cholera, measles and other preventable diseases, as overcrowding at displacement sites threatens to overwhelm the limited healthcare services still open.

From artificial intelligence to migration, some of the forces reshaping the twenty-first century took centre stage at the UN General Assembly on Saturday. Leaders wrestled with a common dilemma: how to harness profound technological and social change without allowing it to deepen the divisions already separating countries and communities. This edition of The Takeaway distils key points from Day 5 of the annual high-level debate.

Canada’s Foreign Minister Anita Anand warned the UN General Assembly on Saturday that the international order has entered an era of profound disruption, calling for stronger multilateral cooperation and new partnerships as major powers increasingly turn away from global economic integration.

India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar warned on Saturday that violent conflicts continue to undermine international peace and security, while countries far removed from the battlefield are being forced to pay a heavy price.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister warned on Saturday that escalating threats across the Middle East risked international peace, energy security and global trade, calling for stronger international cooperation to protect Gulf States and vital shipping routes.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister warned the UN General Assembly on Saturday that escalating military and economic pressure in Latin America and the Caribbean was threatening international law, while accusing the United States of intensifying a decades-long campaign to isolate and weaken his country.

Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, accused Western countries of destabilising the world through “force and double standards” in his address to the UN General Assembly on Saturday, vowing that Moscow's “special military operation” in Ukraine would be “carried through to the end.”

China's Vice President, Han Zheng, urged the world to defend the postwar international order on Saturday, telling the UN General Assembly that geopolitical conflicts, widening development gaps and mounting global challenges make multilateralism more urgent than ever.

Countries adopted on Saturday a new global blueprint for tackling rapidly evolving forms of crime, as the UN’s largest gathering on crime prevention and criminal justice opened in Abu Dhabi with a call for stronger international cooperation.

From the Caribbean to the Pacific, leaders from small island States demanded climate justice, ocean protection and greater solidarity at the UN General Assembly on Friday.  They warned that rising seas are already redrawing national boundaries, while the ripple effects of faraway wars are being felt on their shores. This edition of The Takeaway summarizes key points made during the fourth day of the annual high-level debate.

Haiti is at a “watershed moment” in its struggle against gang violence and needs sustained international support alongside stronger national security institutions, Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé told the UN General Assembly on Friday.