United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres completes his “Solidarity Summit” visit to Uganda on Friday, in an effort to raise the visibility of refugees and increase support for them and their host communities. Hosted by Guterres and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the summit of delegates, donors and heads of state hopes to…
The crisis in South Sudan is driving what is now the fastest-growing refugee population, with some 1.4 million people forced to flee the country, the United Nations Refugee Agency said in an annual report released Monday. In South Sudan, an additional 1.9 million people are living as internally displaced persons…
Newly elected Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who will take up his position as director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) on July 1, is in the United States this week to meet with a wide range of stakeholders on global health issues. Tedros, in the first of planned visits…
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has asked the UN Human Rights Council to open an investigation into widespread violations and abuses in the Kasai regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The human rights violations include 42 mass graves documented by UN officials, who say the actual…
The African nations of Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo were top of mind Tuesday during an address by United Nations (UN) human rights head Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Zeid said that amid the world’s escalating crises and the suffering rooted in…
Renewed fighting in May between rebel forces in the Central African Republic (CAR) has forced another 88,000 people from their homes, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday. The growing number of refugees includes more than 20,000 people who have fled into the Democratic Republic of Congo, many of them…
Negeri Lencho of Ethiopia, the country’s information minister, has defended the extended state of emergency in the East African nation and its refusal to allow United Nations officials access to investigate allegations of human rights abuses. Lencho’s comments came during an interview with al Jazeera broadcast Tuesday. “It is the…
Attacks on aid workers in northern Central African Republic (CAR) have led four international humanitarian organizations to temporarily suspend work in the region, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in CAR said in a Thursday statement. Reuters is reporting that Solidarités International, Intersos, Danish Church Aid, and…
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has asked member nations to cooperate with Tanzanian Mohamed Othman as he continues a comprehensive investigation into the death of former UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld – a case that is now more than a half-century old. Othman, the former chief justice of Tanzania, leads an inquiry…
Journalists in the Democratic Republic of Congo say they have reviewed a video that appears to document the violent deaths of United Nations experts Zaida Catalan and Michael Sharp in March. Government officials made the video available to reporters in Kinshasa on Monday, stressing that the dress and manner of…
At a time when attacks on humanitarian aid workers and UN experts are painfully top of mind – as illustrated by recent events in Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan – a provocative new report from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) questions how the mission and safety of…
The bodies of two United Nations experts missing since March 12 in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been positively identified, the UN said in a statement late Tuesday. The remains of Zaida Catalan of Sweden and Michael Sharp of the United States were discovered by United Nations Mission in…
A global human rights organization is calling on the United Nations Human Rights Council to begin an inquiry into violations in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is an epicenter of the violence and political crisis that also has afflicted North Kivu, Kinshasa and other regions….
A spokesman for MONUSCO, the United Nations (UN) mission in Democratic Republic of Congo, said the UN is doing “everything that is possible” to locate two experts on a humanitarian mission who were abducted near the village of Ngombe over the weekend. Charles Bambara confirmed on Monday that the two…
An independent United Nations expert called Friday for stronger oversight of traditional medicine in African countries, in order to limit the threat to people living with albinism. Ikponwosa Ero, a Nigerian with albinism and internationally recognized human rights advocate, called for a two-track strategy that would address the urgent need…