The UN held a high-level pledging conference on Tuesday for its Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) which ensures humanitarians can deliver urgently needed assistance wherever and whenever crises strike.

Following the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime on Sunday, Syria has entered a period of profound uncertainty, and the UN will have a vital role in ensuring an orderly transition to renewed, stable institutions, continuing efforts to bring together different groups and factions which began at the outset of war in 2011.

Syria’s historic power reset coupled with the highly volatile situation there, has increased basic needs in a country where nearly 17 million people already depended on aid, UN aid teams insisted on Tuesday.

Barely 48 hours since opposition forces including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) swept into Damascus and forced out President Bashar al-Assad, the top UN negotiator tasked with helping the Syrian people to create a peaceful and democratic future insisted that nothing could be taken for granted.

Human Rights Day, marked annually on 10 December, will focus on the theme Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now, and we will bring you to UN Headquarters in Geneva and New York and every region of the world, with dispatches from colleagues on the ground from Gaza and Georgia to Nepal and Nicaragua. UN News app users can follow our live coverage here.

Brazil’s first-ever Minister of Indigenous Peoples and an initiative promoting sustainable agriculture in Egypt are among the six recipients of the 2024 Champions of the Earth award, announced by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday.

ROME, Dec 09 (IPS) - Nobody saw it coming. After years of brutal war in Syria, many believed the battle lines had stabilized, leaving only sporadic skirmishes or even the potential for negotiations.

CARACAS, Dec 09 (IPS) - Poverty, while declining in Latin America and the Caribbean so far this century, shows a new face, that of the looming vulnerability of the poor as they become less rural and more urban, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says in a new analysis.

NEW DELHI, India, Dec 09 (IPS) - South Africa’s G20 Presidency begun in December, with only 12% of SDG targets on track and significant backsliding on more than 30%. As we write this today, there is an urgent need for a paradigm shift and practical solutions for a progressive, people-centred, and development-driven agenda in a fractured global landscape that needs collective healing.

ADDIS ABABA & NAIROBI, Dec 09 (IPS) - Ethiopia’s education system is buckling under the weight of complex, competing challenges. The aftermath of a deadly war in the north, ongoing violence, climate-induced disasters, and widespread forced displacements have converged to push as many as 9 million children out of school. With close to 18 percent of schools in the country destroyed or damaged and persisting intercommunal conflicts in various regions, there are fears that many might never find their way back to school.