Latest news on the Asia-Pacific region from the United Nations

With around half a million in effect, stateless Rohingya refugee children living in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar camp, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) chief stressed on Friday that the international community must address their “untenable situation” and “invest in this generation”.

With over 3,800 civilian women, children and men killed in just one year, Afghanistan has hit yet another “deeply disturbing and wholly unacceptable” record, according to a new report issued on Sunday by the UN political mission in the country (UNAMA) and the UN human rights office (OHCHR).

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres congratulated the Philippines on Friday for establishing a government body to push forward the formal creation of an autonomous region.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday called on India and Pakistan to take steps to defuse tensions in the wake an attack in Kashmir late last week that left dozes of Indian security forces dead.

The top United Nations human rights official has strongly condemned the suicide bomb attack against Indian security forces in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir on 14 February and has called on authorities to bring those responsible to justice.

The Myanmar Government and the UN’s agriculture agency signed on Tuesday a multi-year agreement that will create conditions to help improve nutrition and food security in the south-east Asian country, while safeguarding and sustainably managing the use of natural resources.

With more than 745,000 Rohingya having fled violence in Myanmar to settle in Bangladesh, joining roughly 200,000 others already sheltering there, United Nations aid agencies and partners launched an appeal on Friday to help meet their “dire needs".

Concern over escalating violence in Myanmar’s Chin and Rakhine states continues to grow, with civilians reportedly forced to flee both internally, and across the border into Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have already sought shelter.

A newly formed parliamentary committee to amend Myanmar’s problematic constitution was welcomed as a positive move on Thursday by Yanghee Lee, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the country.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned the deadly terrorist attack on a church in restive southern Philippines early Sunday, and has called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice

The human rights situation in Myanmar continues to deteriorate, as the civilian government fails to bring about democratic reforms and instead resorts to the kind of repression carried out under previous military regimes, said the UN human rights expert Yanghee Lee, speaking at the end of an 11-day mission to neighbouring Thailand and Bangladesh.

The human rights situation in Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – DPRK - remains “extremely serious”, and along with international demands for denuclearization, this constitutes a “a critical test” for the year ahead, a senior UN-appointed expert said on Friday.

Major fighting in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state has so far been avoided following clashes between armed separatists and national security forces who are increasing troop numbers there, a top UN humanitarian official there said on Wednesday.