Afghanistan

In its annual report, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said today that opium cultivation in Afghanistan in 2024 increased by an estimated 19 per cent year-on-year to cover 12,800 hectares. UNODC said that the increase follows on a 95 per cent decrease in cultivation during the 2023 crop season.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative today released the 2024 Multidimensional Poverty Index, which finds that 1.1 billion people across 112 countries live in multidimensional poverty. Over half of the 1.1 billion poor (584 million) are children under the age of 18.

The international community must not look away from the trampling of women’s rights in Gaza, Lebanon and Afghanistan, delegates told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today during its continued discussion on the advancement of women, as they also highlighted initiatives to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in achieving gender equality.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the High-Level Side Event: Ways to Include Women in the Future of Afghanistan, in New York today:

The Special Coordinator for Lebanon is in Israel where she is meeting with Israeli authorities to discuss the latest situation and the Head of the UN Peacekeeping Mission is in contact with both Lebanese and Israeli parties, stressing the urgent need for de-escalation. Efforts are ongoing to reduce tensions and halt shelling.

The Security Council today examined the impacts of the Taliban’s new morality law on women and girls in Afghanistan, with speakers calling on the de facto authorities to reverse course and strengthen their engagement with the international community.

The World Health Organization (WHO) just announced the first prequalification approval of a vaccine against mpox, stating that the MVA-BN vaccine is an important step to fight the disease in both current and future outbreaks. Now, urgent scale-up of procurement, donations and rollout are needed.

The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Samuel Žbogar (Slovenia):

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today announced the appointment of Georgette Gagnon of Canada as his new Deputy Special Representative (Political) for Afghanistan in the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

In Syria, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports in the north-east of the country the UN carried out a cross-line inter-agency assessment mission to Al-Kisrah district in Deir-ez-Zor, and that is the first such mission since 2018.