Several civilians were killed and many others injured, including children, in a large-scale Russian attack on Ukraine’s capital and the wider Kyiv region early on Friday. 

The illicit trade in cultural property is one of the world’s oldest and most profitable forms of criminal activity – but now efforts by the UN and law enforcement agencies across the world are helping to bring down these global operations.

Diabetes is one of the world’s fastest-growing health challenges – and its impact stretches across every life stage, from childhood to older age.

Around 90 Indigenous people from the Munduruku Indigenous group staged a peaceful protest early Friday, blocking the main entrance to the Blue Zone – the restricted area set aside for negotiators – at COP30 in Belém. Access was halted for about an hour...

The UN Security Council met on Friday for its annual debate over how it operates – including the process to select the next Secretary-General in 2026. 

Images emerged this week of what appear to be mobs of masked Israeli settlers carrying out arson attacks on Palestinian homes and property, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Friday.

Just how many people are still trapped in the Sudanese city of El Fasher? That’s the burning question for relatives of the many thousands of people believed to still be there, since paramilitary fighters overran the regional capital of North Darfur las...

Climate change is already fueling a global health emergency, killing more than half a million people each year through extreme heat and threatening hospitals worldwide, according to a major report released on Friday at COP30 in Belém, Brazil.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is supporting Ethiopia as the country faces a suspected viral haemorraghic fever outbreak in the south, the UN agency said on Thursday. 

Hailed by Brazil as “a crucial moment to demonstrate the strength of the health sector in global climate action,” a blueprint for global health systems to adapt to rising temperatures and extreme weather has been launched at the COP30 UN climate confer...

Lack of sufficient funds is jeopardizing the ability of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) to operate, the head of the agency said on Thursday. 

More than nine in 10 children in Gaza are displaying signs of aggressive behaviour linked to more than two years of war between Hamas and Israel, welfare agencies have reported. 

The strongest typhoon to make landfall this year in the Philippines has impacted a staggering 1.7 million children – and more than five million people overall.

Floods, heatwaves, droughts and storms are forcing millions from their homes every year. Most never cross a border; they remain internally displaced yet uprooted all the same. But experts warn that in the not-so-distant future, entire nations could dis...

More than 21 million people in Sudan, 45 per cent of the population, are not getting enough to eat as the war between rival militaries continues, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). 

For more than 40 years Ivanil lived in a house raised on stilts just 20 metres from the water’s edge, in the same community where she was born, on Marajó Island where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean in northern Brazil. 

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) warn of a major hunger emergency, with acute food insecurity set to worsen in 16 countries and territories between now and May 2026, putting millions of lives at risk.

Forty-two people are missing and presumed dead following a shipwreck off Libya – the latest fatal crossing in the Central Mediterranean, where more than 1,000 lives have been lost this year. 

At least 600,000 litres of desperately needed diesel fuel has managed to enter the Gaza Strip in less than a week, UN aid coordinators OCHA said in an update.

Civilian casualties in Ukraine were 27 per cent higher from January to October 2025, compared to the same period last year, according to the latest UN human rights report on the situation in the eastern European country. 

Some 90,000 people have been displaced following the fall of El Fasher in Sudan’s North Darfur - with another 50,000 fleeing violence in the Kordofans, according to the UN migration chief.

Renewed efforts to protect the world’s most exotic and endangered animals and plants from illegal traders, overexploitation and extinction are set to begin at UN-partnered biodiversity talks in Uzbekistan at the end of the month.

Tuberculosis, or TB, remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers, claiming over 1.2 million lives and affecting an estimated 10.7 million people last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. 

Negotiators in Belém, Brazil, opened COP30 with a stark warning: the race to avert catastrophic global heating is being sabotaged by a surge of climate disinformation. The falsehoods, spreading faster than ever online, threaten to derail fragile progre...

The UN Secretary-General called on Wednesday for action to prioritize Africa, urging the world not to turn its back on the continent. 

As health emergencies multiply linked to the climate crisis, governments are joining forces with the UN to protect access to clean water, while data indicates that 118 million people in Europe alone live near healthcare facilities lacking basic sanitat...

Morning light spreads over Sikaiana, a remote atoll in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific where the ocean both sustains life and threatens it.  

Thousands of diplomats and climate experts are heading to Belém, in Brazil’s Amazon, for COP30 – the latest round of UN climate talks. Their task couldn’t be clearer: turn promises into action and agree on tougher plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions....

The crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to worsen amid ongoing fighting that has driven tens of thousands of people from their homes and created acute hunger, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday.

Nearly 100 people in Syria have been abducted or forcibly disappeared since January, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Friday, calling for greater accountability from the authorities.

Independent UN human rights investigators have heard first-hand accounts of torture, unlawful detention and the forced transfer of civilians during their first visit to Ukraine in more than a year.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres is continuing his campaign to accelerate the global switch from fossil fuels to clean energy – “the cheapest source of new electricity in nearly every country.” 

Warnings of worsening humanitarian conditions in Sudan continue, despite reports of a ceasefire deal brokered by international mediators on Thursday.

The United Nations said on Thursday that Israeli authorities have rejected more than 100 requests to bring relief materials into Gaza since the ceasefire began nearly a month ago.

The UN Special Adviser on genocide prevention has raised concerns over widespread allegations of war crimes committed in Sudan’s El Fasher last month, and plans to meet his African Union counterpart on Friday to discuss a coordinated response. 

The Security Council on Thursday adopted a resolution to remove Syria’s transitional President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab from sanctions measures targeting members and supporters of terrorist groups ISIL and Al-Qaida.

The Second World Summit for Social Development wrapped up on Thursday with nations warning that global progress on poverty and inequality will stall unless countries move faster from promises to implementation.

Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has fallen by 20 per cent compared to last year, continuing a dramatic decline since the introduction of a nationwide ban under the Taliban in 2022 – but synthetic drugs and shifting trafficking routes are posing ...