State of Palestine

The UN Human Rights Office today released a report which says that Bangladesh’s former Government, security and intelligence services, as well as violent elements associated with the Awami League party, systematically engaged in a range of serious human rights violations during last year’s student-led protests.

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ statement on the situation in Gaza, in Paris today:

In Ukraine, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs today facilitated its eighth interagency aid convoy this year to deliver humanitarian assistance to 800 residents of a front-line community in the Kharkiv region, where mostly older people remain amid worsening security conditions.

In Somalia, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warns that drought conditions are looming in several areas of the country due to prolonged extreme dry conditions, with hundreds of thousands of families likely to be impacted.

This morning in Geneva, the Human Rights Council held a special session on the situation in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and adopted a resolution establishing a fact-finding mission to examine violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law committed in North and South Kivu provinces.

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.

In Gaza, United Nations aid operations — together with UN partners — continue to scale up across the Gaza Strip. The Organization is also carrying out assessments to determine the needs of impacted and displaced families. Across Gaza, 22 bakeries supported by the World Food Programme are now operational.

The international community must keep pushing for a permanent ceasefire and work towards the reconstruction of Gaza, the UN Chief told the Palestinian Rights Committee today, highlighting the essential role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the process.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the opening of the 2025 session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in New York today:

In Sudan, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Clementine Nkweta-Salami, today condemned the relentless and intensifying shelling and air and drone strikes against civilians in Darfur, Kordofan and other conflict-affected areas as “a ruthless assault on human life”.