UNITED NATIONS, Dec 14 (IPS) - We are former UN officials with decades of combined experience supporting international civil society and governments to advance the rights of women and girls.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 14 (IPS) - Failure to vaccinate most in poor countries sustains the COVID-19 pandemic. Rich country greed and patent monopolies block developing countries from affordably making the means to protect themselves.

A new and disturbing high temperature record for the Arctic of 38 degrees Celsius, or just over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, was confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday.

Serge Brammertz, Prosecutor of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals – the judicial body that assumed the remaining work of the two UN war crimes tribunals in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia - updated the Security Council on Monday, highlighting the progress of trials and appeals.

The world must not forget the roughly one million Rohingya from Myanmar “forced to run for their lives from the military’s genocidal attack against them”, an independent UN human rights expert said on Monday, beginning his first mission to Bangladesh.  

The UN continues to take steps to address allegations of sexual misconduct by peacekeepers in the Central African Republic (CAR) in the wake of the repatriation of Gabonese troops three months ago. 

A UN-backed initiative announced on Monday aims to ensure children with cancer living in low and middle-income countries have uninterrupted access to affordable, safe and effective medicines. 

Lilongwe, Malawi, Dec 13 (IPS) - When a former deputy speaker of Parliament shot himself dead within the National Assembly buildings in Lilongwe in September 2021, it shook Malawi. It also turned attention to the mental health burden in the country.

Corruption spreads through societies and erodes people’s trust in leaders and institutions, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told an anti-corruption conference on Monday, stressing that “greed over need, harms us all”. 

New York, Dec 13 (IPS) - Governments are determined to control information and are prepared to imprison journalists to achieve this mission, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said following the release of their annual global census tracking journalists who were imprisoned and killed in 2021.