UN Interviews

The north of Gaza is utterly devastated while “paper-thin” children cling on to life, even when they are in hospital, said the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Spokesperson James Elder, in an interview with UN News on Friday.

He’s been seeing the reality of malnutrition and dehydration up close on a recent mission to Gaza and told Daniel Johnson that the only way to end the desperation is to ensure a regular supply of aid.

Mr. Elder said the people he met on the ground had only one message for the Security Council which once again failed to reach consensus on Friday following another US veto: ceasefire now.

Weather and climate indicators were “off the chart” last year according to the latest report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) but it’s not too late for humankind to live in balance with nature.

That’s according to the Secretary-General of WMO, Celeste Saulo, speaking to UN News ahead of World Meteorological Day on 23 March. 

She told Nathalie Minard that adopting a ‘net zero’ approach with a transition to renewables “at the core level of decision-making and action” is a must, calling for “every young person on Earth to engage”.

The entire Gaza Strip now has just 12 partially functioning hospitals where cases of severe acute malnutrition among newborns in northern governorates are likely already “overwhelming” medical teams, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Backing repeated international calls for a ceasefire to allow more desperately needed aid into the enclave, WHO spokesperson Dr Margaret Harris warned that many “horrifically” underweight infants “are now dying”, after nearly six months of conflict. 

Hospitals are reporting deaths of babies “in the tens, in the twenties”, but many more families are probably “suffering in silence” because they can’t get to a doctor, she told UN News’s Daniel Johnson in Geneva.

The residents of Gaza have faced unimaginable horrors since October. The massive bombardments that pummelled the territory over the last five months have flattened entire neighbourhoods, and when reconstruction eventually begins, the costs are likely to be in the tens of billions.

That reconstruction will be hampered by an unwelcome, deadly, hangover from the conflict: unexploded bombs, missiles, and other types of munitions.

The UN’s Mine Action Service has warned that “an extraordinary volume of explosive remnants of war is expected to contaminate civilian areas including residential areas, threaten lives and impede the safe delivery of emergency and humanitarian assistance.”

Mungo Birch, the Chief of the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in Palestine, told Conor Lennon from UN News that the current conflict has undone all of the work his team had done before 7 October.

It’s been a full two years since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine which gave rise to “horrific” abuses and likely war crimes, including systematic torture and rape.

These grave violations are detailed in a new report to the UN Human Rights Council by the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine which was published on Friday.

Leading the inquiry is independent rights expert and Commission Chair Erik Møse.

UN News’s Daniel Johnson in Geneva sat down with him after the report launch and began by asking what had been learned about the brutal siege of Mariupol, at the start of the war.

The entire agriculture sector of Gaza which was already under strain before the Israeli offensive “collapsed many weeks ago”, especially in the most damaged northern areas of the enclave.

That’s according to AbdelHakim ElWaer, Assistant Director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) speaking exclusively to UN News, who called for immediate international action to prevent starvation and malnutrition from spreading.

He told Khaled Mohamed that around 55 per cent of agricultural land was now totally unusable in the north, along with half of all greenhouses, while food production has also been hit in the occupied West Bank.

Dr. Rola ElFarra, a physician from Houston, Texas, has family in the Gaza Strip. Some 150 of her relatives have been killed during the Israeli incursion and bombardment of the besieged enclave.

Among a group of Palestinian women who met with the UN Secretary-General last week, Dr. Elfarra shared stories and family photos of some of those killed, over 90 of whom were women and children, at a virtual event, War on #Gaza: Impact on Palestinian Women and Children, held on Wednesday on the margins of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68).

“Many died because of a lack of medical treatment,” she told UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki. “Those left are waiting to die.”

On her return from a visit to Gaza, her first since 7 October, Natalie Boucly, the Deputy Commissioner-General of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), described the “shocking conditions” she had witnessed in the Strip.

Speaking to Khaled Mohamed from UN News, Ms. Boucly said that the population is “literally besieged”, with limited health and sanitation and no access to electricity, and is only receiving “a trickle” of aid.

The Deputy Commissioner-General called for more land crossing to be opened up to aid convoys, and for the Israeli authorities to respect international law, and assume their responsibilities as the occupying power in Gaza.

Climate change is not equal. Across all developing countries, rural women are facing worse challenges due to the changing climate and paying a higher financial toll than men.

A recent UN study has for the first time revealed empirical evidence of these disparities.

Ahead of International Women’s Day, Laura Quinones from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) spoke with gender expert Lauren Phillips about the main findings of the report and what can countries do to close the climate gender gap.

The Dzud – literally meaning disaster in Mongolian – is a recurring and damaging weather event in the landlocked northeast Asian country, devastating its unique nomadic and pastoral way of life and wiping massive numbers of livestock.

But this season, the winter phenomenon is particularly extreme, affecting nearly 250,000 people and tens of millions of heads of cattle, horses, goats and sheep.

To find out more about this unique crisis, its socio-economic impacts, the link with climate change and how the UN is responding, UN News’ Vibhu Mishra spoke with Tiziana Bonapace, Director of the Disaster Risk Reduction Division at ESCAP, the Organization’s sustainable development arm in Asia and the Pacific.

Related story: Mongolian dzud: Extreme weather puts 90% of country at ‘high risk’