News headlines in June 2021, page 5

The imminent closure of the last cross-border aid lifeline to northwest Syria must be postponed beyond the 10 July deadline, UN humanitarians said on Friday, noting that no cross-line supplies had reached Idlib from Damascus, in 11 months.

Speaking in Nigeria, the UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed has emphasized the importance of prevention as “the only real, sustainable solution” to resolving the challenges thrown up by conflict.

Jun 24 (IPS) - In 2020, Southeast Asian countries were already facing varied challenges that affected the region’s food supplies and prices. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic later in the year exacerbated the region’s food insecurity and poverty. Southeast Asian countries need to take a hard look at food security, even as the double challenges — climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic — continue to fester.

Top UN rights experts appealed on Thursday for all governments to ensure that victims of torture receive the rehabilitation services they need, along with guarantees that those who help them do not suffer reprisals.  

BUENOS AIRES, Jun 24 (IPS) - Latin America is investing too little in a green recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, with only 2.2% of the region's stimulus funds spent on environmentally sustainable projects last year, according to a new platform developed by Oxford University and the UN.

The cessation of hostilities negotiated last month between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, remains “very fragile”, the UN envoy there told the Security Council on Thursday.   

The UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, appealed on Thursday for urgent resources to support thousands of people who have fled armed violence in two small towns in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) over the past two months. 

Around 275 million people used drugs worldwide in the last year of unprecedented upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, up by 22 per cent from 2010. That’s among the key findings of the latest annual report released on Thursday by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which also provides an overview of global drug markets, as well as their impact on people’s health and livelihoods.

The European Union (EU) must use its leverage to ensure people everywhere have access to COVID-19 vaccines, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday.   

WASHINGTON DC, Jun 24 (IPS) - In the race between infection and injection, injection has lost. Public health experts estimate that approximately 70% of the world’s 7.9 billion people must be fully vaccinated to end the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 21, 2021, 10.04% of the global population had been fully vaccinatednearly all of them in rich countries.