The President of the UN General Assembly Philémon Yang presented a detailed vision of his 2025 priorities for the world body on Tuesday, calling it an opportunity for “a new start.”

The UN’s humanitarian coordinator and refugee chief are in Ukraine this week where they will unveil the latest plans to assist millions impacted by the full-scale Russian invasion.

Independent UN human rights experts on Tuesday expressed grave concern over the Iranian Supreme Court's decision to uphold the death sentence of Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish woman activist and social worker.

Surging gang violence in Haiti has caused a threefold rise in the number of people uprooted from their homes in a year, the UN migration agency, IOM, said on Tuesday, in a call for “sustained humanitarian assistance right now to save and protect lives”.

Syria’s lethal legacy of landmines and other explosives left over from years of conflict has led to the deaths of over 100 children in the last month alone, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday, calling on the international community to urgently support country-wide demining projects.

MEXICO, Jan 13 (IPS) - The case of a man arrested in Texas, in the south of the United States, for shipping arms parts to Mexico immediately caught the attention of authorities in both countries. But it was only one thread in a web that continues to become more and more tangled.

SYDNEY, Jan 13 (IPS) - Thank God, we have survived another year of genocide, war, destruction and climate crisis. The passing year of 2024 has been a mixture of hope and despair. It began with some hope as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in favour of South Africa’s case against Israel for committing genocide and ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of the Genocide Convention, and to take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 (IPS) - Nature is taking the stand as courtrooms worldwide become battlegrounds for Earth’s rights. The rise in climate litigation shows how the environment can take centre stage as a plaintiff, demanding justice and accountability, benefiting us all.

KARACHI, Pakistan, Jan 13 (IPS) - “She was at her brilliant best, speaking fearlessly and boldly about the treatment of women by the Afghan Taliban, robbing an entire generation of girls their future, and how they want to erase them from society,” said educationist and one of the speakers, Baela Raza Jamil, referring to the speech by Nobel Laureate and education activist Malala Yousafzai.

Syrian refugee Doaa Al Zamel’s harrowing tale of surviving a deadly shipwreck brought the horrors of fleeing war to a worldwide audience when it was told in the book “A Hope More Powerful Than The Sea” in 2017.