News in Brief 22 April 2024 |

This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Gaza violence continues unabated, claims lives of civilians

Israeli bombardment has continued across Gaza with reports of deadly attacks in Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the enclave and in Rafah in the south.

According to the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, a baby was saved in Rafah on Monday after its mother was critically injured in an airstrike.

Here’s Dominic Allen, UNFPA Representative for Palestine, speaking to UN News:

“Heroic doctors in Gaza were able to save the life of the baby from the womb of the mother as she passed away from the head injury she’d sustained. And this emergency Caesarean section which was delivered at a hospital in Rafah ensured that this baby’s life could continue but sadly the mother, Sabrine Sakani, who was 30 weeks pregnant, lost her life. She was killed through her injuries sustained by this airstrike.”

In Geneva, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health highlighted the huge toll on mental health that recent months and decades of violence have taken on the enclave’s besieged population and on medical professionals. 

Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng told journalists that it was “not normal…to anticipate that your life could be extinguished in any moment”, nor for children to grow up “with that level of trauma”. But for decades, that has been normalized for the people of Occupied Palestinian Territory, she insisted.

To date, Gazan health authorities report that more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and some 77,000 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October. 

A child dies every 10 minutes in the enclave, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which issued a fresh call to end the violence and allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into the enclave.

Climate shocks lie behind rise in workplace dangers and deaths: says UN labour agency

Climate change affects a “staggering” number of workers whose health and safety is already suffering, the UN labour agency ILO said on Monday.

Announcing new data, the International Labour Organization said that seven in 10 of the world’s workers are vulnerable to our changing climate.

The health consequences include cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illnesses, kidney disfunction and mental health conditions.

Here’s Manal Azzi, Senior Specialist on Occupational Safety and Health at ILO: 

“15,000 people die due to parasitic and vector-borne diseases or  exposed to in the workplace. Obviously, these include a lot of diseases like dengue, rabies and various diseases that are increasing in regions that we never used to see them before.” 

In a related development, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned on Monday that climate change shocks caused record levels of disruption and misery for millions in Europe in 2023.

The year was marked by widespread flooding and severe heatwaves and these are the new normal which countries must adapt to as a priority, the UN weather agency said.

The WMO and the Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed fears that that 2023 was among the warmest years on record in Europe – on land and sea.

WMO said that heat-related deaths have increased by around 30 per cent in the past 20 years and that these  likely increased “in almost all” of the European regions monitored.

Airlines, authorities should not help unlawful removals from UK to Rwanda, insist top rights experts 

Top independent rights experts on Monday expressed deep concern about the role that airlines and aviation authorities could have in enabling the expulsion of migrants from the United Kingdom to Rwanda.

The rights experts’ comment relates to an agreement between both governments which has yet to be approved by lawmakers in the UK and which was due to be debated once again in the House of Commons on Monday.

Even if the proposals are approved, “airlines and aviation regulators could be complicit in violating internationally protected human rights and court orders by facilitating removals to Rwanda,” the experts said.

They stressed that removing asylum-seekers to Rwanda – or any other country where there was a “risk of refoulement” – violated the right to be free from torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Airlines and aviation authorities “must be held responsible for their conduct”, the experts insisted.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.