The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) today released its newest survey on opium cultivation. The agency estimates that poppy cultivation in Myanmar has increased by 33 per cent in the first season since the military takeover.

Marking peacekeeping’s seventy-fifth anniversary, the Peacekeeping Department is launching a campaign, Peace Begins with Me, which promotes understanding of challenges faced by communities in conflict, demonstrates peacekeeping’s impact and calls for a global movement for peace.

In the Central African Republic, the United Nations peacekeeping mission there launched a countrywide campaign on 16 January to promote efforts to protect civilians and to build confidence between the internal security forces and the population.

The international community’s immediate priority in the Occupied Palestinian Territory must be reversing the trends that marked 2022 as one of the deadliest years in recent history, the United Nations senior official working to end the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict told the Security Council today as it held its regular open debate on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question.

A new report issued today by the International Labour Organization (ILO) shows that the COVID-19 crisis measures yielded powerful new evidence that giving workers more flexibility in how, where and when they work can be positive for both them and for businesses.

Leaders on all sides of the Palestinian question must help lower the flames of tension and maintain the status quo of Jerusalem’s holy sites, the Organization’s senior peace official appealed during his address to the Security Council today.

Today, two inter-agency convoys, facilitated by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, delivered medicine, emergency shelter kits, blankets, sleeping bags, hygiene kits and solar lamps to 5,000 residents in two towns in the southern Khersonska oblast that had been heavily impacted by fighting.

The United Nations country team in South Africa is working with authorities to respond to the recent measles outbreak, including 245 confirmed cases, almost 75 per cent of them children under the age of nine. With funding from Germany and Japan, UNICEF is procuring equipment that will benefit approximately 2,000 health facilities.

​​​​​​​The Security Council today decided to renew the mandate of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the Golan for six months, until 30 June 2023, while requesting the Secretary-General to ensure that it has the capacity and resources needed to fulfil its mandate in a safe and secure manner.

The deepening occupation, increase in violence and absence of a political horizon have empowered extremists and are eroding hope, the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Process told the Security Council today as he called on all parties to undertake concrete steps that will change the negative trajectory on the ground.