UN News Today 11 May 2026 |

Strait of Hormuz de-escalation is urgent, says UN chief

As the Strait of Hormuz crisis deepens and tensions between Iran and the United States remain unresolved the UN Secretary-General called for a peaceful resolution, warning of the widening fallout across Africa and beyond.

Speaking in Nairobi, António Guterres insisted that the Middle East emergency was no “distant crisis”.

He said that roughly 13 per cent of Africa’s imports of largely oil and fertilizers move through the Strait of Hormuz that links the Persian Gulf to the wider world.

“My strong appeal is for the negotiations to go on until that diplomatic solution is found, the ceasefire to be maintained, and in between, the Strait of Hormuz to be completely open…Any restart of the fighting would have terrible consequences.” 

The UN chief noted that and end to the Strait of Hormuz shipping crunch was “the only way” to bring energy prices and fertilizer prices back to pre-war levels.

He explained that Kenya is in a less vulnerable position because most of its planting season is over, but many other African nations are still waiting to receive fertilizers and other agricultural inputs produced in the Gulf.

Today, the price of urea – which contains concentrated nitrogen and is one of the world’s most widely used fertilizers – has risen by more than 35 per cent in a month, at the height of the planting season.

Hantavirus: WHO assesses exposure risk as cruise liner docks in Tenerife

Disease control experts from the UN World Health Organization (WHO) have been providing guidance and support to officials in Tenerife managing the deadly outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship.

The vessel, the Hondius, arrived in Tenerife on Sunday, where passengers and some crew have now disembarked. 

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been leading a team in Tenerife and he stressed that the risk to the public remains low.

“This is not another COVID,” he said on Sunday, adding that people “shouldn’t be scared and they shouldn’t panic”.

Three people died from the outbreak, the first on 11 April, as the Hondius sailed across the Atlantic from southern Argentina. 

No new deaths had been recorded since 2 May.

Sudan war: armed drones caused 80 per cent of civilian killings 

In Sudan, armed drones are believed responsible for killing more than eight in 10 people caught up in the war.

That’s according to latest data from the UN human rights office, OHCHR, which said on Monday that 26 civilians were killed last Friday in separate strikes in North and South Kordofan.

The UN rights office believes that drones killed at least 880 non-combatants between January and April this year, which is more than 80 per cent of all conflict-related civilian deaths it has documented.

With more on the conflict between Sudan’s rival militaries the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, here’s OHCHR spokesperson Seif Magango:

“Use of armed drones by both the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces is also spreading beyond Kordofan and Darfur, to Blue Nile, White Nile and Khartoum… Armed drones have now become by far and away the leading cause of civilian deaths, and increasing reliance on them risks allowing hostilities to continue unabated in the approaching rainy season.”

In response to the findings, the UN human rights chief Volker Türk urged the international community to adopt robust measures to prevent the transfer of arms to the parties to the conflict, “including increasingly advanced armed drones”. 

Under the laws of war, civilians must be protected, along with public infrastructure and facilities.

Daniel Johnson, UN News