Latest news on the Asia-Pacific region from the United Nations
- Simple shelters that are little more than huts with bamboo sticks and plastic sheeting for walls, and tarpaulins overhead, are serving a very important purpose for refugee women and girls forced to flee their homes to the vast refugee camps of Bangladesh.
- Intense air and ground-based strikes at multiple locations in Syria’s south-western Dara’a governorate has resulted in the “largest displacement” in the area since the conflict began more than seven years ago, the United Nations refugee agency has reported.
- In the wake of dozens of civilian deaths – the most recent, a suicide attack in Jalalabad on Sunday – a high-level United Nations representative on the ground called for “the architects of this appalling crime” to be brought to justice.
- United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres visited Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh on Monday, declaring that “nothing could have prepared me for the scale of the crisis and extent of suffering” he witnessed there.
- United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has applauded Bangladesh for giving a safe haven to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees driven from their homes in Myanmar by systematic and widespread violence.
- The continuing plight of nearly one million Rohingya refugees driven from their homes in Myanmar will be the focus of the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres when he travels to Bangladesh this weekend – the country where they have found safe-haven.
- Artisans in Azerbaijan who practice the traditional art of carpet making are being provided with new business opportunities thanks to a project supported by the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
- United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has welcomed the high-level visit of a delegation from Eritrea to neighbouring Ethiopia which began on Tuesday, as “a first concrete step” in the process of normalizing relations between the two countries.
- The United Nations rights expert on Myanmar is “strongly” recommending that the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigate and prosecute those allegedly responsible for “decades of crimes” in the form a grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law inside the country.
- Focussing on “listening to all sides” the new United Nations Special Envoy on Myanmar praised “recent positive steps” taken by the government and United Nations to try and ensure the eventual voluntary, safe and dignified return of Rohingya refugees, to their homes in Rakhine state.
- The health and wellbeing of women and children in North Korea has improved slightly in recent years but “urgent” challenges remain in rural areas, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said on Wednesday.
- Despite challenges brought on by the arrival of the monsoon season this month, United Nations agencies in Bangladesh continue to support nearly one million Rohingya refugees, including thousands of victims of sexual violence.
- A photojournalist has been talking of the “incomprehensible brutality” described to him by Rohingya refugees who are carrying babies after being raped.