In The News

The UN’s emergency relief chief on Wednesday condemned the “$1 billion-a-day” cost of the war in the Middle East, at a time when humanitarian needs are soaring and aid funding is falling dangerously short.

Toxic “black rain” linked to strikes on oil depots, mass displacement and continuing disruption to aid supply chains are upending lives across the Middle East and beyond after 10 days of war in the region, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.

Crises in the region on both Afghanistan’s longest borders are undermining the country’s stability, a senior UN official warned the Security Council on Monday as concerns over Middle East crisis grow amid clashes with Pakistan and a worsening humanitarian crisis.

On 8 March 2026, rally with women and girls around the world to demand equal rights and equal justice to enforce, exercise, and enjoy those rights.

Lebanon has been “dragged back into a state of turmoil and violence”, the UN’s top envoy in the country warned on Saturday, after the latest round of regional strikes triggered a fast‑escalating crisis along the Blue Line. What had been fragile but real momentum, she said, has now collapsed in a matter of days.

Women have never been closer to equality and never closer to losing it, according to UN Women ahead of the start of the world’s largest gender equality gathering

As an increase in conflicts leads to a significant spike in gender-based violence, women across the world face a “justice gap” with discriminatory laws reported in most countries, according to a report from gender equality agency UN Women, released on Wednesday.

As US, Israeli and Iranian strikes continued for a fifth day, a top Human Rights Council probe warned on Wednesday that Iranian prisoners including detained protesters face expedited death penalty proceedings.

Zero Discrimination Day (1 March) calls attention to the right of every person to live with dignity and equality. This year, UNAIDS spotlights the ongoing discrimination faced by people living with and at risk of HIV.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the heads of UN agencies have condemned Saturday’s joint Israeli and US attacks on Iran and the Iranian retaliatory strikes on Israel and the Gulf Regions.

An international early warning system blocked a shipment of chemicals used to make fentanyl that could have produced up to 1.6 billion potentially lethal doses, the UN narcotics control body said on Thursday.

Despite global progress in strengthening land tenure and governance, more than a billion people worldwide – nearly one in four adults – fear they could lose the rights to some or all of their land and housing within the next five years.

Reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine will cost almost $588 billion over the next decade, or nearly three times the estimated GDP in 2025, as housing, energy and other critical sectors continue to come under fire from Russian forces.

A 16-year-old Haitian boy has been talking about how he was lured into working for a criminal gang but then threatened with death when he said he would not fight against the police.

A sprawling online scam industry worth an estimated tens of billions of dollars a year is being powered by trafficked workers subjected to torture, sexual abuse and forced labour inside heavily guarded compounds in Southeast Asia, a new UN human rights report has found.

In Georgia’s Kakheti region, winemaker Sophio Khutitdze is cutting pesticides through FAO-backed sustainable vineyard practices, boosting safer, higher-quality wine production.

As the world goes digital, so does the ancient practice of child marriage.

When the United Nations was founded in 1945, around 750 million people, nearly one-third of the world’s population, lived in Territories under colonial rule. Today, only 17 Non‑Self‑Governing Territories remain, home to fewer than 2 million people.

Calling for sweeping reforms of global institutions, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told African leaders on Saturday that the absence of permanent African seats on the Security Council is “indefensible,” declaring: “This is 2026 – not 1946.”

Some 10 days after Tropical Cyclone Fytia brought heavy rains and flooding to Madagascar, Cyclone Gezani has left the island’s main port in ruins, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday.