United Nations World News

• A historic course correction: how the world’s shipping sector is setting sail for net zero

  Long overlooked as a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, the shipping industry is now at the forefront of a unique display of international cooperation. The shift signals that even the world’s largest transport sector can be steered toward climate accountability.

• 8 million teens in world's wealthiest countries functionally illiterate: UNICEF

  Children in many of the world’s wealthiest countries saw marked declines in their academic performance, mental wellbeing, and physical health as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report published by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Wednesday.

• Funding cuts in Afghanistan mean ‘lives lost and lives less lived’

  In a remote village clinic in the Bamyan Province in Afghanistan last week, a group of teenage girls were given potentially life-saving reproductive health advice, excited by the small kit of menstrual supplies they had been given.

• ‘Politically unacceptable, morally repugnant’: UN chief calls for global ban on 'killer robots'

  UN Secretary-General António Guterres has once again called for a global ban on lethal autonomous weapon systems – machines capable of taking human lives without human oversight – describing them as “politically unacceptable” and “morally repugnant.”

• UN aid office denounces attacks on Gaza hospital

  The UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, underlined the need to protect civilians and healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip in a renewed appeal on Wednesday.