News headlines in September 2026

“Critical minerals” are critical in the eyes of firms and governments in industrialized countries because they are indispensable for products such as modern automobiles, AI, computers, drones, and many other consumer and defense products.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, September 15 (IPS) - On 24 August, I took part in a human rights conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Days before it opened, the city legislature cancelled the intended venue after the Chinese ambassador complained to the Argentine government about the participation of prominent Uyghur human rights defenders, including Dolkun Isa, an activist exiled in Germany. Beijing has waged a campaign of mass detention and forced assimilation against the mostly Muslim Uyghur population for years.

On 11 September 2001 I was in New York, on one of my frequent visits to the United Nations, to which I was tied by a consultancy contract. That morning I woke up late, around eleven, sleeping off the jet lag of the flight from Italy. I was staying at the Hyatt Park, today the Millennium. A hotel a few metres from the Glass Palace, built to serve the world of the United Nations.

UNITED NATIONS, September 15 (IPS) - As the race for the election of a new Secretary-General (UNSG) gathers momentum, the spotlight is on the 193-member General Assembly, the highest policy making body at the United Nations, which has refused to assert itself and continues to play a subservient role in the elections of UNSGs.

Amid rising violence in Yemen, the Security Council has called an emergency meeting at 3pm (NY time) on Tuesday to discuss the situation in the critical Bab el-Mandeb Strait shipping route as UN agencies warn of rising displacement, including thousands of Yemenis fleeing to Djibouti. UN News app users can follow here.

Three weeks after the devastating flash floods in Nepal, about 17,000 children require urgent mental health and psychosocial support in the country, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.

The escalating conflict in Yemen is choking off aid shipments and driving fresh displacement, including to nearby Djibouti, with UN agencies reporting on Tuesday that nearly 100,000 people have been displaced since fighting intensified earlier this month.

The deadly Ebola virus outbreak in DR Congo continues to spread across the vast country despite some success in containing it, aid officials said on Tuesday, in a renewed call for international support to help responders on the ground.

When UNICEF’s Representative in Haiti Geetanjali Narayan stepped into a classroom in Port-au-Prince at the start of the new school year, she asked the children a simple question: What did they most need from the UN children’s agency?

In an underground classroom in Sumy, Ukraine, children sit quietly at their desks, busy with the day’s lessons. For the moment they are shielded from the horrors of nearly five years of war, but just barely.