Category: Pacific

If you are a pupil in Afghanistan, then you were three times more likely to be affected by an attack in 2018 than you were the previous year. Attacks on schools in the country surged from 68 in 2017 to 192 in 2018, according to UNICEF. This is the first time that the number of school attacks has increased, since… Read More

Based on more than 200 first-hand accounts of escapees from the country, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the report asserts that the State-run public distribution system collapsed in the mid-1990s, forcing people to work in informal markets, where they have no choice but to bribe officials to avoid arrest. It also highlights “appalling” levels of… Read More

The mission based its preliminary findings on face-to-face interviews with 13 detainees who were freed from a Taliban detention facility by Special Forces troops from the Afghan Army, on 25 April.  The 53 prisoners released include 45 members of the Afghan defence forces and eight civilians, including three Government officials. Most had been held since last year.    UNAMA said the freed prisoners had… Read More

Speaking in Geneva, UN Children’s Fund spokesperson Christophe Boulierac, likened the humanitarian situation in the war-torn country to “one of the worst disasters on earth”. And he warned that increased violence and last year’s severe drought have left hundreds of thousands of under-fives, critically vulnerable in the west and north of the country. “There are two million children in the… Read More

Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo | Papua New Guinea’s rare cloud forests are a high elevation rainforest characterised by low-level cloud cover (14 June 2011).  The tree kangaroo which is only found in the rainforests of Australia, West Papua, and PNG is threatened due to hunting and habitat destruction. But now the local and indigenous people of PNG, who typically hunted the… Read More

“Over the past week, I have witnessed first-hand the impacts of climate change in the Pacific Island States”, the UN chief said in a statement concluding his visit to the region. “They contribute very little to the global climate emergency and yet, they are the ones that are being most affected”.   He did not mince words in saying that… Read More

“We must stop Tuvalu from sinking and the world from sinking with Tuvalu”, Secretary-General António Guterres said in a tweet posted during his on-going trip to the South Pacific. Pointing out that Tuvalu is “on the extreme frontlines of the global climate emergency”, he noted that “rising seas threaten to drown this island nation – a sign of what’s in… Read More

Mr. Guterres was greeted on board the Uto ni Yalo, a traditional emission-free ship built as part of a naval fleet that combines the ancient craft of Pacific shipbuilding with modern materials and green technology. “As Secretary-General, I have many battles”, the UN chief tweeted. “As a grandfather, the battle against climate change is the battle of my life” adding “it’s… Read More

“Fiji has taken on the sceptics and the deniers” in a loud and clear voice, he said, “and the world is listening”. The Secretary-General outlined that Fiji was the first small island State to preside over the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and in 2017, became the first emerging market to issue a sovereign “green bond”, dedicated to… Read More

“The Pacific region is on the frontline of climate change”, he said. “That means you are also our important allies in the fight against it”. The UN chief said that he was there “to see the region’s climate pressures firsthand, and to learn about the work being undertaken by communities here in Fiji and elsewhere to bolster resilience”. Noting that… Read More