Kenya remains on high alert as Tropical Cyclone Hidaya threatens to dump more torrential rains on East African countries, which recently emerged from three years of historic drought.  The heavy rains have caused deadly flooding and landslides that have killed nearly 400 people across the region since March.  The UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Kenya, Stephen Jackson, has been calling for a “push on resilience” as extreme weather events intensify due to climate change.  UN News’s Thelma Nadzua began by asking him about the UN’s ongoing support to the Government as the ..read more

More than a year of fighting between Sudan’s rival militaries has the country’s people on the verge of famine and uprooted huge numbers caught up in the crossfire. Now, there’s a new threat - unexploded weapons littering Sudan’s towns and cities, where people have received little training about the very real dangers of these lethal devices. Mohammad Sediq Rashid, Chief of the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in the country, tells UN News’s Nancy Sarkis this deadly kind of warfare is new to Sudanese and with access to the capital getting easier, civilians are not waiting for crucial mine clearanc ..read more

After more than a year of brutal fighting between rival militaries across Sudan, the last Government-held stronghold in Darfur of El Fasher is in danger of slipping into famine unless rebel fighters end their siege. That’s according to the UN’s Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator Toby Harward who told UN News that if the fighting for control continues it will trigger revenge attacks across Darfur and a slide into the atrocities that unfolded there two decades ago. Abdelmonem Makki began by asking him to describe the latest situation in El Fasher ..read more

Since the 1950s, 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced, seven billion tonnes of which have become potentially toxic waste. If no action is taken, plastic pollution could triple by 2060.  It’s in our oceans, our rivers and overall plastic pollution represents “a huge problem” says Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, Executive Secretary of the international negotiating committee secretariat (INC) focused on curbing the scourge, which met earlier this week on the road to what it is hoped will be an historic treaty next year. Following the latest round of talks in Ottawa, Cana ..read more

More than two years since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in Ukraine, the harrowing human cost of the conflict couldn’t be clearer, with thousands killed and many of the injured requiring triple or quadruple amputations, mine action experts said on Wednesday. The wider economic cost of the ongoing fighting in one of the world’s main cereal and commodity-producing regions is enormous too, currently valued at many billions of dollars, amid rising food and fuel prices. With more, here’s Paul Heslop, Programme Manager for Mine Action at the UN Development Programme in Ukraine; he’s be ..read more

Left behind in a now-abandoned school in Khan Younis is the evidence of the haste in which Gazan civilians fled the shelter in fear of Israeli bombardment.   Louise Wateridge, Communications Officer with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said people had to evacuate within hours – some leaving behind half-eaten meals, toothbrushes, and even clothes.  She said the ongoing war continues to leave families in fear, children without education, and infrastructural displacement, in Gaza.   UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki spoke to Ms. Wateridge, who is st ..read more

Digital technologies and algorithm-driven software, especially social media, present high risks of privacy invasion, cyberbullying and distraction from learning to young girls – that’s according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) 2024 Global Education Monitor (GEM) report released on Thursday. The report highlighted global progress in girls' access to and attainment in education over the past two decades but called attention to increased social media usage in young girls, its harmful effect on them, and the lack of women pursuing careers in science ..read more

The UN and partners are duty bound to work towards an early recovery on behalf of Gazans, even though that is “intrinsically tied to progress on the political front and the two-State solution”. That’s according to Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza Sigrid Kaag who told UN News in an exclusive interview following the announcement of a new aid mechanism for the enclave that “we cannot ask civilians to wait”. She told Ezzat El-Ferri that reconstruction will have to be far more than physical with a major focus on mental health and psychosocial support, especially for child ..read more

Sabreen al-Sakani: one name among the more than 34,000 people killed in Gaza since 7 October. Sabreen was 30 weeks pregnant when she died after sustaining terrible head injuries in an Israeli airstrike in the south of the enclave.  Thankfully, her baby daughter lived after being delivered by emergency Caesarean section, at a hospital in Rafah last weekend. With more on this story - and the latest on the war in Gaza that was sparked by Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel – UN News’s Daniel Johnson spoke to Dominic Allen, from the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA ..read more

Sudan’s food security crisis is a matter of deep concern with a very real risk there could be famine there, the Director of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Office of Emergencies and Resilience has told UN News. Rein Paulsen has been in the war-ravaged country with an interagency team planning how best to scale up the aid response to the food security crisis. FAO is supporting vulnerable farms to boost crop production and is implementing famine prevention strategies, including vaccinating animals. “We have a window of opportunity and that window as right now,” he told UN News’s Ez ..read more