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

A Tongan family’s trip to visit relatives on Mango island earlier this month turned into a nightmare, when the country was devastated by the eruption of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai underwater volcano, and subsequent tsunami.

With Afghanistan “hanging by a thread” six months after the Taliban takeover, the world cannot abandon the country now – for the sake of its people and overall global security, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Wednesday. 

Violence in Yemen continues to escalate, raising casualties and spilling across the war-torn country’s borders, the Special Envoy for the country and the Humanitarian Coordinator warned on Tuesday.

As news coverage of the eruption and tsunami that hit Tonga starts to fade away, the United Nations Coordination Specialist in the country has a message to the outside world: Tonga’s people are going to need sustained support responding to a disaster of this scale. 

The UN chief has condemned airstrikes launched early on Friday by the Saudi-led coalition battling Houthi rebels in Yemen, that struck a detention centre in the rebel-held city of Saada, which have left at least 60 dead, and more than hundred injured.

When a tsunami swept over much of Tonga last weekend, Joseph Sikulu, a Tongan national, was in Sydney, Australia, exiled from home by strict COVID-19 travel restrictions. For three days, with most communications lines severed, his family and friends were cut off from the outside world, and Mr. Sikulu feared the worst.

Some 12,000 households have been affected by the volcanic eruption and tsunami that hit the islands of Tonga over the weekend, according to estimates by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). 

One of the largest coral reefs in the world has been discovered by a UN-supported scientific mission off the coast of Tahiti. Announcing the stunning find on Thursday, UNESCO said that divers had explored large rose-shaped corals spanning some three kilometres, at depths of between 30 and 65 metres.

More than half a million people have lost or been pushed out of their jobs in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Wednesday.

At least three people have died in Tonga following the massive volcanic eruption and subsequent tsunami wave that hit over the weekend. Homes and other buildings across the archipelago have suffered major damage.

Secretary-General António Guterres expressed his deep concern after reports of a tsunami and ash affecting Tonga following the eruption of an undersea volcano near the Pacific nation.

Despite the annihilation of two major Japanese cities in 1945, atomic bombs have not been relegated to the pages of history books, but continue to be developed today – with increasingly more power to destroy than they had when unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki back in 1945.  

Iran must halt the looming execution of juvenile offender Hossein Shahbazi, four experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council said on Thursday.