Despite the global prohibition against torture, it still “permeates many aspects of our lives”, impacting police conduct, conflict and even climate response, the newly appointed UN expert monitoring violations worldwide has said. 

Dr. Alice Jill Edwards, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, has presented her first interim report to the General Assembly in New York. 

She is the seventh person to hold the mandate, and the first woman in nearly four decades.  

UN News’s Heyi Zou spoke to Ms. Edwards, who began by explaining her “breakthrough” appointment.  

Most people are familiar with the phenomenon of refugees, those forced to flee their country of origin, because of a well-founded fear of persecution or, in some places, because of armed conflict or natural disaster.

But there is another, equally vulnerable category of people, who don’t cross international boundaries, but find it necessary to relocate to a different region of their country.

On today’s episode of The Lid Is On, Conor Lennon met with Cecilia Jimenez-Damary – the outgoing UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons – on the link between conflict and the climate crisis, which is increasingly causing people to leave their homes in search of safety.

Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa

• Somalia: WFP delivering lifesaving aid to record number
• Peace and security worsening for women worldwide
• Children in Africa five times less likely to learn basics

Propaganda and disinformation are nothing new in war, but digital technology and social media are fuelling it like never before, creating an ‘extremely dangerous’ situation in Ukraine and other warzones, for vulnerable civilians exercising their rights.

That’s according to the independent UN human rights expert on freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan, who tells us the “information blackout” inside Russia itself has wiped out any news independent of the State, offering encouragement to other aggressors around the world.

The UN News Russian service’s Nargiz Shekinskaya began by asked Special Rapporteur Khan if she saw any common themes in how information is being abused in warzones across the world today.

• WHO urges governments to get people moving 
• Guterres highlights partnership between UN and India 
• UNICEF warns of child deaths amid Somalia drought 

The Chair of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has found reasonable grounds to believe war crimes have been committed there, since Russia’s invasion of 24 February.

On Tuesday, the Commission presented its first detailed written findings to the UN General Assembly.

Chair Erik Møse says there’s an undeniable need for accountability for the crimes which have been committed - the vast majority by Russian forces, although there are several instances involving Ukrainian troops.

In an interview with UN News, he told Dina Neskorozhana that the contents are report are simply “the truth as we have observed it”.

• Women and children pay heaviest price in global health reversals
• Impact of Tigray strikes on civilians ‘utterly staggering’: Türk
• Iran: Killing and detention of children ‘deeply worrying’

• 1.2 billion living in acute multidimensional poverty
• UN rights system must focus on the people we serve, vows incoming chief
• West Africa hit hard by climate crisis as floods decimate lives

• ‘Catastrophic’ hunger for the first time ever in Haiti
• UN chief welcomes historic Israel-Lebanon maritime border agreement
• Move ‘from despair, to hope and action’ over food crisis: Guterres

It’s been thirty years since the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to create the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, on 17 October 1992.

Great advances have been made in reducing global poverty since then, particularly in China and India, but the period has also seen significant increases in inequality, between and within countries.

To get a better idea of what progress has been made in dealing with poverty worldwide, Conor Lennon met Aye Aye Win, the President of the International Committee for October 17, which promotes the spirit and aims of the International Day, and Stacy White, an activist who advocates for some of the poorest people in New York.

Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa