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

India must immediately halt its crackdown on Kashmiri activists, the independent UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, said on Friday, calling for greater accountability. 

A lack of clean water is threatening the well-being and “cultural identity” of the people of Samoa and other Pacific Island nations according to the UN’s most senior representative across the region.

Six months after catastrophic floods struck Pakistan, more than 10 million people, including children, still lack access to safe drinking water, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.

Raising alarms that the situation on the Korean Peninsula is heading in the “wrong direction”, a senior UN official appealed to the UN Security Council for unity on Monday, following a spate of missile launches in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The UN chief condemned on Friday the latest ballistic missile launch by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), calling on Pyongyang to resume dialogue leading towards sustainable peace and a nuclear weapons-free Korean Peninsula.

The UN food agency in Afghanistan announced on Friday that a lack of funds has forced deep cuts to life-saving assistance in March for at least four million people.

Violence resulting from the brutal military coup is continuing inside Myanmar on an “alarming scale” the UN Special Envoy told a meeting of the General Assembly on Thursday.

UN-appointed independent rights experts on Myanmar have urged social media companies to do more to resist the military junta’s “online campaign of terror”.

Nepal is due to graduate from its current status, as one of the world’s least developed countries, in 2026. Subhash Nepali, an economist in the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office in Nepal, has seen the economic progress made in the country, where he was born and raised.

UN humanitarian coordinators have deployed to Vanuatu to help with the aid response, a week since back-to-back tropical cyclones and a 6.5 magnitude earthquake hit the Pacific island nation.

The Philippines violated the rights of women victims of sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the Second World War by failing to redress the continuous discrimination and suffering they have endured, a UN women’s rights committee said in a decision published on Wednesday. 

Afghanistan under the Taliban remains the “most repressive country in the world [for] women’s rights”, the senior UN official in Kabul told the Security Council on Wednesday, while nevertheless voicing a nuanced position on the importance of continuing to engage with the group.

One third of women in Tajikistan are subjected to violence by their husbands, but very few cases are reported. Social and legal support, provided through the joint EU/UN Spotlight Initiative, is helping affected women to protect their rights.