Asia Pacific

In response to the earthquake in Myanmar, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees rushed emergency supplies from Yangon to some 25,000 earthquake survivors in the Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw areas. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its partners have also begun delivering emergency supplies.

In the Central African Republic, nearly 20,000 Central African refugees returned to their homeland voluntarily in 2024. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says this was the highest annual number of people returning to the country since the voluntary repatriation programme began in 2017.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today published a report which says air pollution in East Asia and the Pacific is linked to nearly one in four deaths of children under the age of five and can impact every stage of a child’s life.

On 4 and 5 December, the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and its Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific (UNRCPD), in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nepal and with financial support from Germany, will organize an Informal Regional Meeting on the New Global Framework for Through-life Conventional Ammunition Management in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks at the opening of the fourteenth Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-United Nations Summit, in Vientiane today:

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the Pacific Islands Forum Opening Ceremony, in Tonga today:

In Gaza, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warns that repeated waves of displacement — combined with overcrowding, insecurity, crumbling infrastructure, active hostilities and limited services — is worsening the humanitarian situation there, which is already catastrophic.

From 25 to 28 June, the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1540 (2004) and the Government of China hosted the fourth “Training Course for UN Security Council resolution 1540 Points of Contact in the Asia-Pacific Region” in Beijing, China.

The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) reports that 311 weapons collected from former combatants were handed over to the Government on Tuesday as part of the National Programme for Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration and Repatriation.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message to the 2024 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Future Forum, in Hanoi today: