Latest news on the Asia-Pacific region from the United Nations
- Young people in Fiji are helping to revive indigenous cultural practices of the Pacific Ocean island while learning about sustainable transport thanks to an initiative supported by the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
- The decision of the Thai Government to grant citizenship to three of the boys recently rescued after being trapped in a flooded cave, along with their football coach, has been welcomed by UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR.
- The survivors of the atomic bombings, known in Japanese as the hibakusha, have become global “leaders for peace and disarmament”, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at Thursday’s Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony in Japan, commemorating the 73rd anniversary of that devastating day.
- At a joint press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, UN Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the ongoing talks between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as well as Japan’s renewed initiative of dialogue with the country.
- It’s essential that Nagasaki’s devastation should “not be forgotten” now or in the future, if the threat of nuclear war is to be lifted, said the Director of the Japanese city’s Atomic Bomb Museum, ahead of a visit there on Thursday by the UN Secretary-General.
- The Head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, on Tuesday urged government representatives and business leaders from the Asia-Pacific region to offer more support and protection for over 700,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled violence and discrimination in Myanmar’s Rakhine State over the past year.
- Following the magnitude 7 earthquake which rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok at the weekend, more than 130 aftershocks have been felt with some villages being turned into “ghost towns”, journalists at the UN in Geneva heard on Tuesday.
- The world needs the continued moral leadership of the people of Hiroshima, the top United Nations disarmament official said on Monday, commemorating the 73rd anniversary of the atomic bombing that devastated the city while lamenting that after decades of momentum towards a nuclear-free world, “progress has stalled.”
- Following the magnitude 7 earthquake that hit Indonesia's East Lombok on Sunday, the United Nations Secretary-General said he was “saddened by the devastating loss of life, injuries and damage caused”, in a statement issued on Monday.
- A deadly attack on one of the last functioning hospitals in Yemen in the key port city of Hudaydah has put hundreds of thousands of people at risk and damaged efforts to prevent a third cholera epidemic in the war-torn country, top UN officials warned on Friday.
- The death of a local United Nations staff member in a suicide attack on Wednesday in the city of Jalalabad, has highlighted the tragic and relentless effects of terrorist attacks targeting civilians across Afghanistan.
- Ongoing violence and attacks on civilian infrastructure in Hudaydah directly threaten hundreds of thousands of children and their families in Yemen, according to the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in a statement released on Wednesday
- As part of a recent pattern of attacks in Afghanistan, at least 13 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded on Tuesday in Jalalabad, drawing “outrage” and condemnation “in the strongest terms” from the United Nations Assistance Mission in the country, UNAMA.