3 December 2014 – A car bomb was detonated in Mogadishu this morning, close to a United Nations convoy travelling near the international airport, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) confirmed. No UN staff were injured in the attack, which took place at approximately 9.40 am, though there are reports of casualties among bystanders and security personnel. Investigations continue into the bombing, with no group as yet claiming responsibility. In other news from the country, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, Nicholas Kay, welcomed the inauguration of Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan as the head of the…
Author: UN News
2 December 2014 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned a “horrific” terrorist attack in Mandera, Kenya which left over 30 people killed in the second outburst of extremist violence to afflict the East African nation in less than two weeks. According to media reports, militants claiming to belong to the Al-Shabaab extremist group targeted non-Muslim civilian workers in Mandera – a town sitting along the Kenya-Somalia border – killing at least thirty-six people. It is the second targeted attack in Mandera following the brutal killing of 28 people on a passenger bus there 10 days ago. Al-Shabaab’s operations…
1 December 2014 – The Government of Ghana today took steps towards enhancing fiscal transparency and promoting the financial inclusion of its citizens by committing to a United Nations-backed initiative that supports countries’ transitions to electronic payments. With the assistance of the Better Than Cash Alliance, which is hosted by the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), the Government of Ghana will focus on transitioning forms of Government payments to electronic ones, beginning with the digitization of government workers’ salaries. It subsequently plans to expand the use of electronic payments to the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP) social welfare programme in…
1 December 2014 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Sigrid Kaag of the Netherlands as his new Special Coordinator for Lebanon, the UN Spokesperson’s office announced today. According to a press release, Ms. Kaag will bring to the role her “wealth of experience” in political, humanitarian and development affairs as well as her deep understanding of the diplomatic world following her service in regions including the Middle East. Prior to appointment, Ms. Kaag was a Special Adviser to the Secretary-General and previously served as the Special Coordinator of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint…
28 November 2014 – If countries of the Mediterranean want to stem the tide on forced migration and human suffering, they must put agricultural, food and rural development, including youth-targeted incentives, at the core of regional cooperation, said the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today. Speaking at the Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Agriculture in Palermo, Italy, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva stressed that increasing agro-entrepreneurship and employment opportunities for rural youth needs to be at the centre of strategies to combat poverty and boost development. “We need to find alternatives to raise the incentives for…
24 November 2014 – Faced with an “anaemic” pace of job creation and nearly 1.3 million unemployed citizens, Greece risks a prolonged social crisis unless urgent measures are taken, warns a new report out today from the International Labour Organization (ILO). According to the report, Productive Jobs for Greece, more than 70 per cent of the almost 1.3 million unemployed people in the country have been out of a job for more than a year, as a result of one in four jobs being lost since the beginning of the country’s economic crisis in 2008. Meanwhile, the number of Greeks…
29 November 2014 – Condemning the “horrific” attack on Kano Central Mosque, which killed dozens of people and injured hundreds of others, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on the authorities to bring the perpetrators to just and reaffirmed the United Nations support to Nigeria’s battle against terrorism. In a statement issued by his spokesperson late yesterday in New York, Mr. Ban condemned the deadly attack on what media reports are describing as one of the largest mosques in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. Dozens of people were killed and scores mores were injured when gunmen reportedly set off multiple…
26 November 2014 – The United States must rise to meet the high human rights standards it has set for itself and others around the world, a group of United Nations human rights experts urged today, as they called on President Obama to support “the fullest possible release” of a report detailing Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interrogation practices. In an open letter addressed to Mr. Obama, the six UN rights experts said that much depended on how the President would handle the stalemated issue of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s CIA report, stressing that the stakes were “very…
28 November 2014 – The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today warned that it is possible for the Ebola virus to be present in semen for 3 months after recovery, as the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it plans to have 2,700 teams operating throughout villages in the remote forest areas of Guinea to educate villagers and monitor the epidemic at the community level. UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac announced those plans at the Geneva press briefing by telephone from the village of Meliandou, in the forest area of southeastern Guinea, where epidemiologists believed that the Ebola outbreak began in…
28 November 2014 – The top United Nations officials leading the fight against Ebola have made an appeal for people who possess skills that are “quite rare” to join the global effort, such as those who can provide patient care, undertake contact tracing and analyze how the outbreak is evolving in remote areas of the virus-affected countries, saying that “deploying more people to the districts is our highest priority.” “These skills are quite rare in our world today because there are not thousands and thousands of people who are really experienced in Ebola and its management,” Dr. David Nabarro, UN…