Category: World

According to a study by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), forming the basis for intergovernmental discussions, while the benefits of economic growth and social progress have reached rural areas, persons with disabilities and women in many countries, the divide between the haves and the have-nots, is widening. “In recent decades, quality of life… Read More

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