Reporting that Syria missed an October deadline to respond to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on the country’s reported use and stockpiling of such weapons, the senior United Nations disarmament official urged today that the Security Council end its divisions on the critical matter and act to resolve it.
A new Food and Agricultural Organization report warns that the Sustainable Development Goals will not be achieved by 2030 unless the world’s forests are restored. Regional responses are making significant advances and 63 countries and other entities have committed to restoring 173 million hectares, but more needs to be done.
The parties to the Syrian conflict could reconvene the Constitutional Committee in November, a senior United Nations mediator said during a 27 October Security Council videoconference meeting, emphasizing that such progress could be “a door opener” to a deeper and wider peace process.
Some parts of Yemen are showing the highest rates of acute malnutrition among children under 5 ever recorded there, with more than half a million cases in southern districts, according to a food analysis released today by the Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund, World Food Programme and partners.
Honduras deposited the fiftieth instrument of ratification to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, resulting in it being entered into force in January 2021. The Secretary-General said the Treaty is a commitment towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, which is the Organization’s highest disarmament priority.
In South‑East Asia, severe, widespread flooding and landslides due to recent heavy rains have killed more than 100 people and displaced over 111,000, according to the United Nations, which is working with partners in Viet Nam to assess affected areas and support the Government’s aid response by providing food and other items.
The United Nations migration agency and the African Union launched their first‑ever report on African migration, showing that present-day African migration takes place mainly by land, not by sea, and that migrants’ destinations are overwhelmingly each other’s countries and not Europe or North America.
There has been a dramatic rise in major storms, drought, wildfires, floods and other extreme weather events over the last 20 years, which have claimed 1.23 million lives, impacted 4.2 billion people and caused almost $3 trillion in global economic losses, according to a report published today by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
To mark Space Week, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs will hold a webinar tomorrow on the KiboCUBE programme, a collaboration with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency giving developing countries an opportunity to deploy a satellite from Japan’s module of the International Space Station free of cost.
The World Food Programme in South Sudan strongly condemned an attack on its boat convoy near Shambe carrying food assistance intended for people displaced after losing their homes and crops to floods. One of the 13-person crew is missing and presumed killed, and three others are suffering from gunshot wounds.
