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

Nearly two years on from Myanmar’s brutal military coup against the democratically-elected government, the country has sunk deeper than ever into crisis, undergoing a  wholesale regression in human rights, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Friday.

A combination of determination, a vision, and UN support is transforming the fortunes of remote villages in underdeveloped regions of Eastern Indonesia, and boosting the livelihoods and prospects of local farmers.

The UN must present “a united front” in the fight for women’s rights in Afghanistan, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said after returning from a two-week country visit spanning several continents. 

The UN deputy chief and head of UN Women have conveyed a direct message to Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership calling on them to put the good of the country first and end recent policies towards women and girls that have confined them in their own homes, and violated their basic human rights.

Barring girls and young women from classrooms in Afghanistan could wipe out huge gains made in education and create “a lost generation”, the UN’s educational and cultural organization, UNESCO, has warned.  

Sri Lanka must fully compensate victims of the Easter Sunday 2019 terrorist attacks, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Wednesday, following a recent decision by the country’s top court. 

Four million children are fighting for survival near contaminated and stagnant flood waters in Pakistan, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday.

The steep increase in the number of Rohingya refugees risking their lives to cross the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal last year is a reflection of their growing desperation, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Tuesday.

Top independent human rights experts expressed alarm on Monday at a rise in abductions of girls as young as 13 in Pakistan, who are forced to marry and convert to Islam.

The UN Security Council must be unified in opposing Taliban policies to erode the fundamental human rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, the UN’s Special Representative there said on Friday.

The UN human rights office, OHCHR, welcomed on Friday the Indonesian President’s statement of regret earlier this week, for serious rights violations dating back to the 1960s. 

The Iranian Government faced renewed strong condemnation from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday, who accused it of the “State-sponsored killing” of protesters.

UN-led efforts to encourage the international community to stand with Pakistan after deadly floods last summer, continued on Monday in Geneva, where Secretary-General António Guterres urged radical reform of the global financial system, in favour of developing countries.