Geneva, 7 December 2023 (IOM)* — The International Organization for Migration (IOM) echoes the call of the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres for a lasting and immediate humanitarian ceasefire to allow critical aid to reach those in urgent need across the Gaza Strip.
IOM is responding to pressing humanitarian needs in Gaza. Photo: UNRWA 2023.
IOM also shares the grave concerns raised by UN officials as humanitarian efforts in Gaza near collapse due to intensive fighting and lack of access.
(UN News)* —The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting Friday [] morning New York time to discuss the catastrophic situation in Gaza. This follows Wednesday’s urgent letter by Secretary-General António Guterres – one of the most powerful tools at his disposal – urging the body to help end carnage in the war-battered enclave through a lasting humanitarian ceasefire.
UN Photo/Loey Felipe | A wide view of the UN Security Council chambers as members meet on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.
A resolution tabled late afternoon in the chamber calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire was vetoed by the United States.
(UN News)* — The UN World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday [] released its first-ever guidelines on managing chronic low back pain – the leading cause of disability worldwide, that effects an astonishing one in 13 of us.
Notably, the guidance includes both recommendations and warnings for long-term sufferers, arguing against the use of opioid painkillers; physical therapies, such as traction; and lumbar braces and belts.
Instead, healthcare professionals are advised to develop exercise programmes; help patients educate themselves on the options and self-care strategies; and provide psychological support, such as cognitive behavioural therapy.
6 December 2023 — Refugees, asylum seekers and migrants held inside detention centres in Tripoli, Libya, have been assaulted, sexually abused, beaten, killed and systematically deprived of the most basic humane conditions, including proper access to food, water, sanitation and medical care, says Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Taiz, YEMEN, 6 December 2023 (UNFPA)* –“One day, when I was returning from fetching water, I collapsed on the road. I was bleeding so badly that I knew I was going to lose my baby.”
Umm Mahra was 31 years old and five months pregnant when she was forced to seek refuge with her family in a remote displacement camp in Taiz, in Yemen’s southwestern highlands.
Conflict had erupted across the country and a crippling drought took hold, exacerbating the situation for millions of people already fleeing for their lives.
(UNCCD)* —Recent drought-related data based on research in the past two years and compiled by the UN point to “an unprecedented emergency on a planetary scale, where the massive impacts of human-induced droughts are only starting to unfold.”
(Beirut) – Two Israeli strikes in Lebanon on October 13, 2023, that killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists was an apparently deliberate attack on civilians and thus a war crime, Human Rights Watch said today [7December2023].
This residential building in Gaza collapsed after it was targeted in an Israeli airstrike. Photo: Yousef Hammash/NRC
5 December 2023 — “The pulverising of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age. Each day we see more dead children and new depths of suffering for the innocent people enduring this hell.
(UN News)* — The past decade has been confirmed the warmest ever recorded, continuing an alarming 30-year trend that the UN weather chief said on Tuesday [] is “unequivocally driven by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.”
UN Photo/Mark Garten | Secretary-General Visits Antarctica
Marked by record breaking land and ocean temperatures, the decade between 2011-2020 saw continued rising concentrations of greenhouse gasses that “turbo charged” dramatic glacier loss and sea-level rise, according to a new report from the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO).