
Facing a staggering $4 trillion annual financing gap for development and mounting trade wars, top UN officials on Monday called for urgent action to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals and revive international cooperation.

Thousands of lives have been “destroyed in the pursuit of supremacy”, as international humanitarian law has been “dismissed” and “cast aside”, said UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, on Monday.

A new UN initiative aims to drive collective action to support the rights and needs of people everywhere whose lives have been upended by the continuing threat posed terrorism.

Sudan’s humanitarian crisis is deepening as escalating violence blocks aid deliveries and forces thousands more civilians to flee, the UN warned on Monday.
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UNITED NATIONS, Apr 29 (IPS) - Water emergencies are deeply personal to us. Coming from Southeast Asia and southern Africa—two regions that struggle with water challenges—we have witnessed firsthand how water defines the fate of communities and nations.
Read the full story, “Floods and Droughts are Two Sides of the Same Crisis”, on globalissues.org →

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Apr 28 (IPS) - They found shoes, hundreds of them, scattered across the dirt floor of an extermination camp in Jalisco state. These abandoned shoes, once belonging to someone’s child, parent or spouse, stand as silent witnesses to Mexico’s deepest national trauma. Alongside charred human remains and makeshift crematoria meant to erase all evidence of humanity, they tell the story of a crisis that has reached industrial-scale proportions.

BUSAN, Korea, Apr 28 (IPS) - “As the son of a haenyeo, a traditional Korean female diver, I grew up by the sea, often watching the ocean with my mother. Captivated by the beauty and majesty of the sea, I chose to study marine science and have devoted my entire career to the ocean,” said Do-hyung Kang, Minister of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of the Republic of Korea.

BERLIN, Germany, Apr 28 (IPS) - For the first time ever in its history, the United Nations Peacekeeping Ministerial (PKM) will take place in Berlin from 13 to 14 May. The aim of the meeting is to discuss the future of UN peace missions. These biennial meetings serve as a gauge of the continuing political support for such missions, which are, of course, just one of the tools in the UN’s comprehensive ‘toolkit’ for handling conflict — alongside general conflict prevention, mediation missions and peacebuilding measures.