UN News Today 12 June 2025 |

Oceans summit: biodiversity chief warns of lack of ambition

At the Ocean summit in France, the UN’s biodiversity chief warned on Thursday that there’s a lack of ambition among nations to protect marine life in all its forms.

Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said that the national targets announced so far will not make it possible to achieve the agreed goals and targets of the international accord.

“The global community has repeatedly recognized the need for urgency and ambition and there is no shortage of technical guidance…But, if these are not reflected in national planning and implementation, both in terms of the level of ambition needed and but also in terms of the scope of cross-sectoral action needed, then we will fail to achieve our common goals.”

Ms. Schomaker told delegates in Nice that although there is plenty of technical guidance available to all nations to help them implement positive biodiversity action, a lack of investment is holding up progress.

Given the “volatile” nature of global financing today, the case needs to be made urgently that biodiversity and ocean biodiversity are an investment opportunity and an investment in our future, she insisted.

Displacement doubles while funding shrinks, warns UNHCR

The number of forcibly displaced people worldwide reached 122.1 million in April this year, driven by conflict in Sudan, Ukraine and Myanmar – the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Thursday.

The total is slightly lower than the 123 million figure reported at the end of last year, mainly because so many Syrians have returned home since the fall of the Assad regime.

Nonetheless, the last decade has seen a steady increase in the number of people uprooted from their homes, UNHCR said.

Its data shows that Sudan is now the world’s largest displacement crisis, with 14.3 million people affected by more than two years of war, following a breakdown in transition to civilian rule.

“We are living at a time of intense volatility in international relations, with modern warfare creating a fragile, harrowing landscape marked by acute human suffering,” said High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

The UNHCR chief stressed that low and middle-income countries continue to host the vast majority of refugees, despite limited resources.

Atomic watchdog says Iran not complying with nuclear safeguards

The UN-backed atomic watchdog passed a resolution on Thursday declaring that Iran is not complying with its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

The development follows serious warnings from the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it has not been possible to determine whether Iran’s nuclear programme was “exclusively peaceful” – as per the 2015 nuclear deal – which the US withdrew from in 2018.

It comes ahead of a fresh round of negotiations between Washington and Tehran slated to begin on Saturday in Oman, amid heightened geopolitical tensions linked to rumours of an impending Israeli attack on Iran.

Thursday’s resolution call by the IAEA’s governing board passed by 19 votes for, three against and 11 abstentions.

The draft text highlighted serious and growing concerns that Iran had “repeatedly” been unable to demonstrate that its nuclear material was not being diverted for further enrichment for military use.

The resolution text also asserted that Tehran had failed to provide “technically credible explanations for the presence of [man-made] uranium particles” at undeclared locations in Varamin, Marivan and Turquzabad.

Daniel Johnson, UN News

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