UN News Today 26 November 2024 |

Lebanon crisis: UN rights chief urges warring parties to agree on ceasefire

UN human rights chief Volker Türk lent his weight to growing ceasefire calls in Lebanon on Tuesday, to end more than a year of conflict with Hezbollah militants, sparked by the war in Gaza.

The development follows dire assessments from UN aid teams about the cost of what they’ve called “relentless” Israeli attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs, including multiple strikes on Tuesday on the Lebanese capital.

Speaking in Geneva, UN human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence highlighted the High Commissioner’s call “for an immediate ceasefire to put an end to the killings and the destruction” caused by the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah armed militants.

“Israeli military action in Lebanon has caused widescale loss of civilian life, including the killing of entire families, widespread displacement and the destruction of civilian infrastructure…The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah has also continued to fire rockets on the north of Israel…Most of these rockets are indiscriminate by nature, prolonging the displacement of many Israeli civilians, which is unacceptable.”

So far this month, 250 people have been killed every week in Lebanon, bringing the death toll to more than 3,700 since the escalation of hostilities in October 2023.

This includes at least nine youngsters between 22 and 23 November, “including boys and girls who were sleeping in their beds” said the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.

In Sudan: first UN World Food Programme trucks reach starving Zamzam camp

To Sudan, where UN humanitarians reporting from Zamzam camp in the war-torn west that people have been eating crushed peanut shells to survive.

On Friday, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reached the camp for the first time in many months with assistance.

Across the camp, parents mourn the deaths of their children who have died from malnutrition, said WFP spokesperson Leni Kinzli.

She urged Sudan’s rival militaries who’ve been at war since April last year – along with all militias, armed groups and tribes – to allow more convoys to pass safely, to prevent famine from spreading:

“More than 700 trucks carrying WFP food aid are currently on route to communities across Sudan. This includes to 14 areas that are either facing famine or are at risk of famine and it’s part of a scale-up effort to reach millions of people in the country’s most needy and isolated conflict areas.”

The UN agency convoys will carry 17,500 tons of food assistance, which is enough to feed 1.5 million people for one month.

In a related development, WFP reported that humanitarian flights to Dongola in Northern State began at the weekend.

The opening of Dongola will help humanitarian workers to expand their reach in northern Sudan and travel more quickly to Al Dabbah – which is a key hub for sending aid to acutely food insecure populations in the Darfur region.

Dongola also provides much easier access to Wadi Halfa, a transit city on the way to Egypt, where many Sudanese have sought refuge.

FAO warns over extremely critical hunger in strife-hit DRC

To the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where hunger is also a deadly threat for huge numbers of people impacted by years of violence in the east of the country.

In an alert, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that 25.6 million people across the country are acutely food insecure today. The situation is especially bad in camps for people displaced by fighting in the resource-rich eastern provinces.

FAO provides emergency agricultural aid for micro gardens and school gardens in displacement camps “to pull people back from the brink”, said Deputy Director-General, Beth Bechdol.

The UN agency also distributes seeds, growing kits, livestock and cash transfers to support people affected by conflict, including at Rusayo 2 site outside Goma and a market-gardening production site run by elderly women in the village of Mugunga, close to the border with Rwanda.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.

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