On 20 June 2022, the President of the General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid, held an informal high-level event to commemorate the first International Day for Countering Hate Speech, as established by General Assembly resolution A/RES/75/309 on the “Promotion of interreligious and intercultural dialogue and tolerance in the fight against Hate Speech”. This milestone resolution was adopted by consensus on 21 July 2021.
In Sri Lanka, the World Food Programme (WFP) is launching its emergency response in the country amid the escalating food crisis. WFP is working to provide life-saving food, cash and voucher assistance to 3 million of the most vulnerable people who can no longer meet their food needs due to the economic crisis there.
Almost one third of the food insecure South Sudanese that the World Food Programme (WFP) planned to support in 2022 will be without humanitarian food assistance due to funding shortages. WFP said that the suspension of aid comes as South Sudan faces a year of unprecedented hunger.
Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres remarks at the fifteenth session of the Conference of State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, today:
The following statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres was issued today:
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) today awarded the Population Award for an individual to its youngest‑ever recipient, Emma Theofelus, a 25-year-old Parliamentarian from Namibia for her work advocating for women’s empowerment and adolescent sexual and reproductive health.
In Uganda, the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund has just allocated $4 million to address the rising food insecurity in the Karamoja region, in the north-east of the country. Poor food production there has caused hunger to increase in the last two years.
The Secretary-General condemned the attack in Mali which killed two peacekeepers and injured two others after their vehicle — an armoured personnel carrier — hit an improvised explosive device outside of the town of Douentza. Despite such challenging circumstances, United Nations personnel are continuing their mandated work.
United Nations humanitarian colleagues in Madagascar report that food and nutrition security has improved, saying that since January, 1.1 million people in the Grand Sud region have been reached with critical assistance following large-scale humanitarian assistance in 2021 and this year.
Marking World No Tobacco Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a report highlighting the tobacco industry’s carbon footprint from production, processing and transporting tobacco, noting that it is equivalent to one fifth of the CO2 produced by the commercial airline industry each year.
