Around the globe, over one million individuals have signed petitions, taken to stores and restaurants, and posted photos of ridiculous packaging on social media to call out corporations like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestlé, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, and Starbucks for their massive single-use plastic footprints.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 16 April 2018 (UNFPA)* – On the surface, child marriage seems to affect few girls in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But dig a little deeper, and a pattern emerges among the most marginalized, impoverished girls.
Young actors perform a scene from “Ruža,” an interactive play about the harms of child marriage. Photo by Almir Panjeta for UNICEF/UNFPA BiH
UNITED NATIONS, New York, 9 April 2018 (UNFPA)* – Today, international leaders are convening at United Nations Headquarters, New York, to discuss the critical issue of migration and human mobility, a megatrend that is reshaping the global landscape.
An estimated one billion people around the world are migrants – one in every seven people.
10 April 2018 (UNRWA)* — Sitting at the front of the classroom, 11-year-old Tala Al-Masri, is bright-eyed and attentive as she pursues her dream of an education at the UNRWA Zaytoun Elementary Co-Ed B School in Gaza.
In spite of being born with a severe visual impairment, leaving her with little light in her eyes, Tala’s passion for learning has been clear since she was a child. “Tala is one of the most active and wonderful students in the school,” her school principal Itaf Adel Hadi describes her.
Kyiv, 17 April 2018 (IOM)*– Four years into the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, acute humanitarian needs persist. These include the basics – access to health care, food, water and employment.
IOM, the UN Migration Agency, is appealing for USD 38 million to assist 340,000 people in critical need this year, an increase from the 215,000 people the Organization has assisted over the four years since start of the conflict.
Bangladesh, 17 April 2018 (IOM)*– Rohingya refugees and local people in Teknaf, a southern sub-district of Cox’s Bazar, are racing to prepare for monsoon rains forecast to start as early as this week.
IOM, the UN Migration Agency, has been supporting efforts to prepare the camps, which although smaller than the giant Ukhiya sub-district settlements of Kutupalong and Balukali, still house thousands of people, who face similar threats of flooding and landslides.
Agence France-Presse (AFP), the world’s third largest news agency, and the Independent, a British online newspaper, have each published stories that question whether chlorine or any other chemical was used against Syrians in Eastern Ghouta on April 7.
Although the massive outflow of Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh grabbed worldwide headlines, the international community must not forget that more than 400,000 of the minority group are living in dire situations at home, a senior United Nations official on 17 April 2018 said.*
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David Longstreath, IRIN for OCHA | A girl in Basara IDP camp near Sittway, Myanmar Tensions in Myanmar forced thousands of Rohingya Muslims into makeshift camps. (file)
“There is a humanitarian crisis on both sides of the Bangladesh-Myanmar border that is affecting the world’s largest group of stateless people,” Ursula Mueller, the UN’s deputy relief chief, told reporters in New York, following her recent visit to Myanmar.
More than 40 million people are displaced by conflict and another 25 million annually by disaster – within the borders of their own countries – with children, on average, making up over half those numbers, the United Nations migration agency on 17 April 2018 said.
Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran/UNAMID | This woman and her child sheltered under their cart are among thousands who have fled violence and are now in Al Salam camp for Internally Displaced Persons, South Darfur. (file)
“In 1998, internal displacement was recognized as one of the world’s greatest tragedies and 20 years later, it still is,” said William Lacy Swing, who heads the International Organization for Migration (IOM), marking the twentieth anniversary of the principles that identify the rights of internally displaced persons.
Despite the Security Council’s demand for cessation of hostilities in Syria, civilians in the war-torn country continue to bear the “enormous” cost of intense military activity by parties to the conflict, the top United Nations relief official on 17 April 2018 said.
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe | UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock briefs the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria.
“Since the passage of resolution 2401, the Secretary-General has on many occasions called for its full implementation,” stated Mark Lowcock, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, referring to the the Council text adopted in late February calling for a 30-day ceasefire across Syria.
