NAIROBI, Kenya / PARIS, France, August 5 (IPS) - One would expect that this year’s wetter than average rainy season in parts of Africa would be viewed with relief, not fear. Yet many areas in the region sits at a knife’s edge—still recovering from years of drought and a historic famine, too much rain leads to flooding and water-borne diseases. Both varieties of extreme weather place enormous stress on livestock systems across the region, on which communities rely for both sustenance and livelihoods.

As conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel continue to deteriorate, a senior UN official upheld the need for a political solution to the crisis in Gaza that can lead to a lasting peace between the two peoples.

Famine was declared in the Zamzam camp in North Darfur one year ago. And since then, little has changed – no aid trucks have reached the region, the nearby city of El Fasher is still under siege and food prices are four times higher than other parts of the country.

The Security Council is meeting to discuss rising concern in Israel and elsewhere over the dire conditions facing the dozens of hostages who remain in Gaza. It follows the release of recent videos by Hamas and other Palestinian militants showing emaciated Israeli hostages, which the UN Secretary-General called “an unacceptable violation of human dignity.” A senior UN political affairs official is expected to brief. Stay with UN News for live updates in coordination with UN Meetings Coverage. App users can follow the coverage here.

On Tuesday, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported the deaths of five children with a dozen seriously injured, following the detonation of an unexploded mortar shell in the city of Lakki Marwat in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province over the weekend.

Children in Gaza are dying not just from hunger, but from the total collapse of the systems meant to protect them, UN agencies warned on Tuesday.

Obtaining food is no longer a routine journey in Gaza; it has become a race, fraught with death on all sides as women and children risk their lives to get aid.

High stakes negotiations got underway at the UN Geneva on Tuesday to agree on a legally binding treaty to curb plastic pollution, attended by delegates from nearly 180 countries.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that 56 people had died and 132 were missing after a vessel carrying 200 migrants capsized off the coast of Shuqrah, in Yemen’s Abyan Governorate on 3 August.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, is calling for Pakistan to halt the forcible return of Afghan refugees holding proof of registration (PoR) cards, Spokesperson Babor Baloch said on Tuesday in Geneva.