News headlines in March 2024, page 9

Some 70 million hectares of forest are affected by fires each year, causing huge environmental and economic damage. On the International Day of Forests, marked on 21 March, we look at how an innovative UN-led initiative in Indonesia is dramatically reducing forest fires, saving livelihoods and cutting harmful emissions.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has received the interim findings of an independent panel conducting an assessment of UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinians, his office said on Wednesday in a note to correspondents.

The UN’s deputy human rights chief on Wednesday underscored the need to ensure accountability for ongoing serious violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), stressing that it would also benefit long-term peace and security across the region.

Racism is “an evil infecting countries and societies around the world” the UN chief has said in his message marking the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination but it impacts communities differently.

Eleven months of brutal fighting is driving a hunger crisis in Sudan, with some areas likely to experience catastrophic levels of food insecurity by the lean season in May, the UN Security Council heard on Wednesday.

Russia has instilled a pervasive atmosphere of fear in the occupied regions of Ukraine, perpetrating egregious violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws in an attempt to cement its control, according to a new report from the UN human rights office, OHCHR, released on Wednesday.

With the number of political prisoners growing and a shutdown of civic space, people in Belarus are being deprived of their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and more, a new UN human rights report presented on Wednesday has revealed.

Women in one of the poorest parts of rural Madagascar are growing their financial independence from men by cultivating village land and selling their produce.

Less than half of the UN aid convoys planned for Gaza’s hunger-ravaged north have made it so far this month, despite repeated appeals from the international community to ramp up relief to more than one million people on the brink of starvation, UN humanitarians said on Wednesday.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 19 (IPS) - This year more than half the world’s population has the chance to go to the polls. That might make it look like the most democratic year ever, but the reality is more troubling. Too many of those elections won’t give people a real say and won’t offer any opportunity for change.