Middle East

From Madagascar, the United Nations is issuing a flash appeal for $76 million to support more than 1 million people in the south who face a potentially life-threatening lack of food, nutrition, water and sanitation, and health assistance due to the region’s worst drought in 10 years coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 100 people were killed and over 25 others injured following the 2 January attacks in Niger’s Tillaberi Region, according to local authorities.  A United Nations inter-agency assessment mission arrived in the town of Ouallam yesterday, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs confirmed.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced today the appointment of Lynn Hastings of Canada as Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

The Food and Agriculture Organization said it is working to bolster the global response to the Fall Armyworm, considered one of the top 10 devastating plant pests, which places at risk up to 80 million metric tons of maize worth $18 billion per year in Africa, Asia and the Near East.

The United Nations official on Middle East peace updated the Security Council today on developments in the region, highlighting continued violence, including against civilians and children, as well as Israel’s ongoing settlement-related activity in the occupied West Bank.

A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that if greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically reduced, all of the world’s coral reefs will bleach by the end of the century, and calls for even more urgent action to limit ocean temperature rise.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today announced the appointment of Tor Wennesland of Norway as his new Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Personal Representative to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority.

The Security Council, acting through its temporary silence procedure today amid the ongoing COVID‑19 pandemic, decided to renew for six months the mandate of its long‑standing disengagement mission in the Golan Heights.

The 2020 International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East concluded today, with a vibrant online panel discussion exploring how trends in the systematic spread of untruths have changed the way traditional news outlets cover the Israel-Palestine conflict, and created avenues for citizen journalists to quickly push out stories to express their lived realities.

Journalists, media experts, policymakers and scholars within academic and faith communities in Palestine, Israel and elsewhere gathered for the opening of the twenty‑seventh annual International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East today, held for the first time in virtual format, amid the ongoing COVID‑19 pandemic.