The “frightening” number of executions carried out this year in Iran prompted the UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Tuesday, to call on the country’s authorities to abolish the death penalty or halt all executions.

The impact of ongoing violence among rival military parties in Sudan is threatening to derail bilateral political progress with neighbouring South Sudan, worsen the fragile humanitarian situation, and pose fresh risks, top UN officials warned the Security Council on Tuesday.

The values of human dignity and freedom, enshrined in the UN’s founding Charter in 1945, have never been so under threat, warned the Secretary-General on Tuesday, delivering a wide-ranging speech in Spain after receiving the Carlos V European Award.

The number of internally displaced (IDPs) in Sudan has more than doubled in just the last week, since armed clashes erupted between rival militaries in multiple cities across Sudan, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.

The top UN official involved in the Middle East peace process raised the alarm on Tuesday following an Israeli military operation which reportedly killed more than a dozen Palestinians, including three commanders from the militant group, Islamic Jihad.

Global progress in reducing the premature deaths of pregnant women, mothers and babies, has flatlined for eight years due to decreasing investments in maternal and newborn health, according to a new UN World Health Organization (WHO) report, published on Tuesday.

NEW YORK, May 08 (IPS) - A civilian student named Saber was caught in the crossfire in Khartoum. He had two choices: either flee and lose everything; or die. But within a moment his option to choose was violently denied: he died.

TOKYO, Japan, May 08 (IPS) - The Ukraine crisis, which in addition to bringing devastation to the people of that country has had severe impacts on a global scale—even giving rise to the specter of nuclear weapons use—has entered its second year. Against this backdrop and amid urgent calls for its resolution, the G7 Summit of leading industrial nations will be held in Hiroshima, Japan, from May 19 to 21.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, May 08 (IPS) - The World changes, though prejudices and misconceptions remain. In 1996, political scientist Samuel Huntington published The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, in which he predicted that people’s cultural and religious identities would become the primary source of conflict in a Post–Cold War World.

Huntington’s allegations have been contradicted by a number of critics, among them American Palestinian professor Edward Said, who lamented their extreme cultural determinism, which omitted the dynamic interdependency and interaction of cultures.

ROME, May 08 (IPS) - Less than a decade ago, Africa was home to 60-65% of the world’s uncultivated arable land and 10% of renewable freshwater resources, as reported by the African Union in 2016, while concluding that African farmers could feed the world.