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.

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.

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.

Against a background of increasing violence, shrinking civil society space and creeping annexation, speakers at a special meeting of the Palestinian Rights Committee to observe the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People stressed the need to mobilize efforts to hold Israel accountable, including through the International Court of Justice.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is in West Java, Indonesia, following the earthquake that struck Monday, and has distributed 350 customized kits to women, adolescents and people living with HIV. Deployed midwives to West Java have also established a reproductive health centre, where three babies have been born so far.

Warning that current trends could worsen the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region, the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Process, briefing the Security Council today, called on all parties to rein in violence and incitement and, together with the international community, take urgent steps towards achieving the two-State solution.

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, observed on 29 November:

GENEVA, 4 November (United Nations Office at Geneva) — Media experts discussed the opportunities presented, and challenges for young journalists reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the positive and negative sides of social media, as the 2022 International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East concluded today.

GENEVA, 3 November (United Nations Office at Geneva) — Journalists, media experts, policymakers and scholars gathered for the opening of the twenty‑ninth annual International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East today, held in Room XXVI at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) today released its Adaptation Gap Report, which finds that global efforts in adaptation planning, financing and implementation are not keeping pace with the growing risks.