The UN chief on Saturday condemned an attack which saw eight peacekeepers from the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, wounded during clashes between the powerful M23 rebel movement and Government troops.

Efforts are being made in the south of Madagascar to end a traditional but illegal practice in which girls are promised as a wife to older men, sometimes even before they are born.

BOSTON, US, Mar 15 (IPS) - I was born in Brakpan, Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up in eSwatini (known then as Swaziland). People in these two countries share one predominantfear: unemployment. Other worries in these countries and others in the region include unwanted pregnancies, low income and food safety. The diseases that are dreaded the most are cancer and diabetes. Feared infectious diseases include HIV-AIDS, COVID and cholera.

CHIMANIMANI, Zimbabwe, Mar 15 (IPS) - Honeybees quickly react with a sharp and loud buzz sound as beekeeper Tanyaradzwa Kanangira opens one of the wooden horizontal Kenyan top bar hives near a stream in a thick forest in Chimanimani, 412 kilometres from Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

CAIRO, Egypt, Mar 15 (IPS) - “I don’t think the world understands what it means to be a woman living in Syria today,” explains Shatha, a woman from Deir-ez-Zor, Syria, who is a survivor of gender-based violence. “It is a life filled with danger, grief, and daily struggle.”

The UN’s top political affairs official on Friday briefed the Security Council and slammed ongoing Russian elections in illegally occupied areas of Ukraine.

Amid a rising tide of anti-Muslim hate, top UN officials condemned the scourge on Friday as the General Assembly adopted a resolution to push back against it during commemorations marking the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Friday expressed outrage at the recent abductions by gunmen of hundreds of people in Nigeria.

The war in Gaza has left a staggering almost 23 millions tonnes of rubble and unexploded weapons scattered across the enclave, UN humanitarians said on Friday.

Fresh evidence of “horrific…widespread and systematic” abuse and likely war crimes committed by Russian forces against civilians and military detainees in Ukraine emerged on Friday, in a new report by UN-appointed independent rights investigators.