World News

Refugee children in their millions are missing out on an education, the UN said on Friday, in an appeal to host countries to back more inclusive policies to prevent them from “languishing” in camps for years and losing hope. According to the new UN refugee agency (UNHCR) report,  Stepping Up, of 7.1 million refugee youngsters of school age, more than half ...

More than 500 million people today live in areas affected by erosion linked to climate change, the UN warned on Thursday, before urging all countries to commit to sustainable land use to help limit greenhouse gas emissions before it is too late. Speaking at the launch of a Special Report on Climate Change and Land by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on ...

With Zimbabwe now experiencing its “worst-ever hunger crisis”, the UN food relief agency has revised its humanitarian appeal to step up food assistance to people most affected by drought, flooding, and economic stagnation. “Yesterday the humanitarian community launched an urgent appeal for funds to respond to the country’s very difficult humanitarian situation”, World Food Programme (WFP) Spokesperson Herve Verhoosel told ...

After a horrific two-year ordeal across three countries – being bought and sold by people traffickers and surviving running out of fuel on an inflatable boat while trying to cross the Mediterranean – Mohamed finally gave up hope. The Somali man’s wife Leyla, 21, recalls the day he burnt himself to death after hearing that they were not on a ...

Zambia’s President Edgar Lungu says the country will not change its laws on homosexuality in exchange for donor aid. According to the state-owned Daily Mail, Mr Lungu made the remarks when outgoing Swedish Ambassador to Zambia, Henrik Cederin, and European Union head of delegation Alessandro Mariani visited him at the state house. The president was quoted as saying that “there ...

The global response to realizing poverty and environmental goals agreed by world leaders in 2015 has not been “ambitious enough” according to the UN Secretary-General. In his latest report on the progress towards meeting the targets of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs, the UN chief António Guterres said that while a “wealth of action” had been taken by governments across ...

Heavy flooding and landslides in the Rohingya refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, has left thousands of children and families in an increasingly dire situation with critical infrastructure damaged or destroyed, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday, while scaling up relief efforts to those vulnerable children. “Conditions in the camps and host community are deteriorating rapidly because ...

Food aid is being tripled for troubled Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to respond to what the World Food Programme (WFP) has described as the world’s second largest hunger crisis in the world, after Yemen. In addition to worsening hunger, communities in north-east DRC face a deadly Ebola outbreak and inter-ethnic clashes that claimed at ...

Children were used as suicide bombers in a triple attack in Nigeria on Monday, Unicef has said. Two girls and a boy carried out the bombing outside a video hall in Konduga village in north-eastern Borno State, the UN children’s charity said. Their ages are not yet known. Officials say at least 30 people were killed and 40 injured in ...

Whether a child finishes first or last will no longer be indicated in primary and secondary school report books from next year in Singapore, – a move which Education Minister Ong Ye Kung hopes will show students that “learning is not a competition”. Report books will not just stop showing a student’s position in relation to class or cohort. The information to ...