Tag: Asia News

UN Assistant Secretary-General for Europe, Central Asia, and the Americas Miroslav Jenča told the Council that the Korean Peninsula must be “an area for cooperation” and not for escalating tensions. In this regard, the Security Council’s unity is “essential” to ease tensions and overcome the diplomatic impasse. Drill simulates ‘nuclear counterattack’ DPRK has conducted 14 launches of ballistic missile systems… Read More

The World Food Programme (WFP) appealed for urgent funding for its operations in the country, where families are battling crisis after crisis, including growing hunger, since the Taliban takeover of 2021. Catastrophic hunger could become widespread across Afghanistan, and unless humanitarian support is sustained, hundreds of thousands more people will need assistance to survive, the agency said in an alert.… Read More

Strongly condemning DPRK’s Thursday launch of an intercontinental-range missile, UN Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated his calls on Pyongyang to immediately desist from taking any further destabilizing actions. News reports said the missile was fired just hours before the start of a Japan-Republic of Korean summit in Tokyo, on regional security – the first such meeting between the leaders of the… Read More

In an appeal to internet chat platforms to monitor content more carefully and allocate sufficient resources to do so, the rights experts warned that Telegram in particular had become “a hotbed of pro-military activity”. ‘Violent and misogynistic’ Tens of thousands of followers had been drawn to the junta’s “violent and misogynistic content”, warned the rights experts, who noted that women… Read More

There are currently 46 so-called Least Developed Countries (LDCs), a United Nations designation. They have been participating in an international conference in Doha, Qatar, focused on how best to support their development and future graduation from the LDC group. Subharsh Nepali (left) and colleagues (file) “In the 1970s, when Nepal was first included in the UN list of Least Developed… Read More

According to the Vanuatu National Disaster Management Office, more than 250,000 people have been affected, which is almost 80 per cent of the country’s population. First Judy, then Kevin Less than a week after Cyclone Judy forced residents to evacuate from the capital Port Vila, they were then hit by Cyclone Kevin, a category four storm that brought heavy rain and winds… Read More

Roza Isakovna Otunbayeva, UN Special Representative and head of the UN’s Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, strongly condemned recent Taliban decrees that have further eroded the rights of Afghan women. However, she also urged the international community to preserve “whatever political space exists” for frank discussions with Afghanistan’s leaders, warning of rapidly deteriorating humanitarian and economic conditions across the country.… Read More

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) called for the authorities to provide full reparation and an official apology to the survivors, who have suffered decades of physical, psychological and other consequences.  ‘Symbolic’ victory  “This is a symbolic moment of victory for these victims who were previously silenced, ignored, written off and erased from history in the… Read More

Like many women in Tajikistan, Shermatova Marjona has experienced gender-based violence. Ms. Shermatova met her husband while she was working abroad as a cleaner in Moscow, Russia. It wasn’t long before they were married, and he persuaded her to send all the money she earned to her father-in-law in Tajikistan, who was to use the funds to build a house… Read More

The unprecedented flooding, triggered by severe monsoon rains, submerged a third of the country and resulted in some 1,700 deaths.  Millions displaced, infrastructure damaged  More than 33 million people were affected overall, or one in seven Pakistanis, while eight million were displaced and 13,000 injured, according to the UN Office in the country.  Around one million livestock animals perished in… Read More