Switzerland

GENEVA, Dec 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Despite calls for ceasefires and compassion amid the Covid-19 pandemic, violence and persecution have continued to force people from their homes, with record numbers now displaced, the UN said Wednesday.

By the end of 2019, 79.5 million people were living uprooted and displaced, including nearly 30 million refugees — more than one percent of the world’s population.

And the UN refugee agency said preliminary figures showed more people had been forced to flee in 2020, pushing the number past 80 million.

GENEVA (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s pledges to halt the separation of migrant families, address “systemic racism” and climate change are promising and could reverse setbacks during the Trump administration, the U.N. human rights chief said on Wednesday.

“He has made a series of promising pledges like the protection for child arrivals - and I think that’s fantastic that they will stop the family separation - and of course all the issues with the frontier, the border with Mexico,” Bachelet told a news conference in Geneva.

GENEVA, Dec 5 (NNN-SANA) – The fourth meeting of the Small Body of the Syrian Constitutional Committee, concluded here yesterday, after a weeklong discussion.

Geir O. Pedersen, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, told a press conference that, the delegations have agreed that the next meeting will be starting on Jan 25, and they also have agreed on the agenda, which is constitutional principles or basic principles of the future new Syrian constitution.

“During the week, they have rather more precisely discussed a wide range of topics,” the envoy said.

BELLINZONA (Switzerland), Dec 4 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A former warlord will become the first Liberian to face a war crimes trial over alleged atrocities during the country’s 1990s civil war when he goes on trial in Switzerland.

Alieu Kosiah, who was arrested in Switzerland in 2014, stands accused of murder, rape and a string of other crimes during the first of Liberia’s back-to-back civil wars, which together killed some 250,000 people between 1989 and 2003.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The promise of COVID-19 vaccines is “phenomenal” and “potentially game-changing”, Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, told a briefing on Thursday.

Speaking from Copenhagen, he said supplies were expected to be very limited in the early stages and countries must decide who gets priority, though the WHO said there is “growing consensus” that first recipients should be older people, medical workers and people with co-morbidities.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization does not recommend countries issuing “immunity passports” for those who have recovered from COVID-19, but is investigating the prospects of using e-vaccination certificates, a WHO medical expert said on Thursday.

“We are looking very closely into the use of technology in this COVID-19 response, one of them how we can work with member states toward an e-vaccination certificate,” he told a virtual briefing in Copenhagen.

03 Dec 2020; MEMO:  The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories called on Wednesday for a transparent investigation into Israel's shootings at several Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, causing the children critical injuries, news agencies reported.

GENEVA (AP) — Climate change is increasingly damaging the U.N.’s most cherished heritage sites, a leading conservation agency warned Wednesday, reporting that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and dozens of other natural wonders are facing severe threats.

Climate change that has lead to shrinking glaciers, increasing fires, floods and droughts, and the bleaching of coral reefs are among the troubles facing 83 of the 252 World Heritage Sites listed by UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural agency.

GENEVA, Nov 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Progress in eliminating malaria has stalled in recent years, the World Health Organization said, with more than 400,000 people once again estimated to have died from the disease last year.

In its World Malaria Report 2020, the WHO said progress against the mosquito-borne disease was plateauing, particularly in African countries bearing the brunt of cases and deaths.

In 2019, the global tally of malaria cases was estimated at 229 million — a figure that has been at the same level for the past four years.

GENEVA, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- The latest round of Syrian constitutional talks, which aim at writing a new constitution so as to pave the way for a political solution for the decade-long conflict in the country, will kick off in Geneva on Monday, the UN said on Sunday.

Geir O. Pedersen, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, told a press conference here that the Fourth Convening of the Small Body of the Syrian Constitutional Committee will start on Monday morning inside the European headquarters of the UN in Geneva.