UN News Today July 4 |

Gaza’s forcibly displaced run out of space to shelter

Bombing continued overnight into Thursday in Gaza where some of those uprooted in response to Israeli evacuation orders have had to turn back after finding nowhere to shelter, UN humanitarians have reported.

“Thousands are sheltering in UNRWA schools…and government buildings,” the UN agency assisting Palestine refugees told UN News, adding that others “are already beginning to turn back, telling us of lack of spaces in other areas”.

UNRWA also reiterated warnings that living conditions are “beyond unbearable”, because of the mountains of waste and rubbish piled high alongside roadsides and near makeshift shelters.

An estimated 85,000 people have left Shujaiyah district in eastern Gaza City in the north of the enclave in the last week, while latest data indicates that by Tuesday, at least 66,700 more Gazans left eastern Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, in line with new evacuation orders issued on Monday evening.

Beyond the UN premises-turned-shelters, many more thousands of families now live “in the skeletons of bombed-out buildings or among piles of trash”, UNRWA said, before echoing warnings from the UN health agency, WHO, of a rise in communicable diseases including diarrhoea and hepatitis, particularly among malnourished children with weakened immune systems. 

Myanmar’s junta ‘doubling down’ on its attacks on civilians

To Myanmar, where the military junta that seized power in 2021 is now “doubling down” on attacks against civilians and inciting ethnic violence, the Human Rights Council heard on Thursday.

Independent rights expert Tom Andrews, a Special Rapporteur appointed by the Geneva-based Council, told the forum that Myanmar’s armed forces were losing ground to those opposed to their rule and “appeared committed to destroying the country that they cannot control”.

An increased number of airstrikes on civilian targets has continued, Mr. Andrews said, noting that villages, monasteries and hospitals had been levelled. Interrogation victims have also been shot at point blank range, maintained the independent expert, who is not a UN staff member.

In this environment, there is no question of the ethnic Rohingya being able to return to Rakhine state in Myanmar from the camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, the Special Rapporteur insisted, a reference to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who faced targeted persecution by the military in 2017:

“And if those who are in those camps in Bangladesh were to go back to Rakhine State under these conditions, not only would they have zero rights, but they would be surrounded by the very military forces who committed genocidal attacks against them and forced them across the border in the first place.” 

UN chief urges peace above all else, to resolve multiple conflicts

Deep global divisions and conflicts must end so that the existential threats posed by climate change and the negative impacts of artificial intelligence can be tackled together, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday.

In a speech to country leaders at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, Mr. Guterres called for a lasting peace in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, the Sahel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Myanmar and Haiti.

The “central goal of our multilateral system must be peace – a pre-condition for sustainable development and the enjoyment of human rights,” said the UN Secretary-General, as he addressed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – which is the world’s largest regional security body including Belarus, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.