Latest news on the Asia-Pacific region from the United Nations
- More than two weeks after deadly Cyclone Mocha hit Myanmar, aid access is uncertain, disease is spreading, and a major food crisis remains a very real threat, the UN said on Friday.
- The “lack of unity and action” in the Security Council “does little to slow the negative trajectory on the Korean Peninsula”, Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, said on Friday, following Pyongyang’s failed military satellite launch earlier this week.
- The trafficking in illegal narcotics, precursor chemicals, timber and wildlife, people and illicit goods across Southeast Asia is being tackled thanks to the support of the specialized UN agency focusing on drugs and crime.
- The UN in Bangladesh on Thursday announced that there will have to be a further cut in food rations for Rohingya refugees who are sheltering in the country, after a funding shortfall of $56 million compelled the World Food Programme (WFP) to cut the budget further.
- UN chief António Guterres is “deeply concerned” after Uganda’s president signed into law a punitive so-called “Anti-Homosexuality Act”, the UN Spokesperson said in a statement released late on Tuesday.
- Effective governance of outer space is necessary to propel innovation and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a new policy brief published on Wednesday.
- Soaring debt levels compounded by high inflation and rising interest rates have dashed job-seekers’ hopes in developing countries, the International Labour Organization (ILO) warned on Wednesday.
- UN Secretary-General António Guterres has strongly condemned the latest satellite launch by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), his spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.
- The UN chief on Wednesday commended the work of the judges and staff of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as its final judgement was delivered, increasing the prison sentences on appeal of two former top Serbian security officials.
- For the first time since fighting broke out in Sudan on 15 April, humanitarians have been able to reach desperate families trapped in the conflict’s epicentre, Khartoum, with food assistance, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.
- A large group of UN-appointed independent human rights experts on Tuesday called on the Belarusian authorities to immediately release all those being held on “spurious charges”, simply for exercising their fundamental rights to peaceful assembly, association and expression, to be released without delay.
- A total of 4.9 million people in Haiti – nearly half of the country's population – are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity, according to a new UN-supported report.
- Global warming’s devastating effects on the world’s sea ice, icebergs and glaciers – part of what is known as the cryosphere – need to be better understood and mitigated, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).