UN News Today 17 April 2026 |

Ceasefire in Lebanon takes effect, hopes for further peace negotiations 

As a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon began on Friday, the UN Secretary-General urged all parties to respect it and expressed hope that it could lead to further negotiations.  

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) also welcomed the ceasefire as it highlighted severe pressure on severely strained medical services. 

Since early March, the agency has verified 139 attacks on healthcare in Lebanon which have left 91 dead and injured hundreds more.  

WHO says that hospitals treating the wounded are operating at near full capacity, with thousands of trauma cases stretching supplies and leaving critical gaps in essential medicines.  

In total, more than 2,100 people have been reported killed since the escalation between Hezbollah fighters and the Israeli military in early March. 

Gaza war’s terrible toll on women and girls highlights ongoing crisis 

The war in Gaza has inflicted a far higher toll on women and girls than in previous conflicts in the Palestinian enclave, with more than 38,000 killed by Israeli military operations since Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel sparked the war in October 2023, UN Women said on Friday. 

The overall total includes at least 22,000 women and 16,000 girls; it amounts to an average of at least 47 women and girls killed every day, the agency’s Sofia Calltorp, Chief of Humanitarian Action of UN Women, told journalists in Geneva: 

“There is a complete lack of most services, in particular, I would say those services that are needed for women: that is sexual and reproductive health and rights, that’s access to sanitary pads, that’s access to the most basics. I mean, when I was in Gaza in November, I met two women who had to deliver on the street because there were no transportations to bring them to any functional hospitals.” 

Six months since the ceasefire began in Gaza, women and girls continue to face severe and persistent risks, as humanitarian needs remain critical and recovery conditions remain fragile.  

“This war has reshaped families,” Ms. Calltorp insisted, pointing to the tens of thousands of households that are now headed by women whose husbands have been killed. 

“They are sustaining their families without income, without support or access to essential services,” the UN Women official stressed. 

According to the Gazan health authorities, more than 72,300 Palestinians have been killed in the Strip and at least 172,000 injured since October 2023. 

Record number of Rohingya refugees died at sea in 2025: UNHCR 

In 2025, nearly 900 Rohingya refugees were reported missing or dead in the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal, making it the deadliest year on record in South and Southeast Asia, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Friday. 

Some 5,000 Rohingya refugees are believed to have drowned at sea over approximately the last decade.  

UNHCR said that this makes the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal “an unmarked graveyard for thousands of desperate Rohingya refugees”. 

With more, here’s agency spokesperson Babar Baloch, speaking in Geneva: 

“No one would put their family on a risky boat knowing that the chances of survival are really low if the sense of desperation is not there. If there is no hope, we fear more people may lose their lives.”  

In 2017, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Myanmar for Bangladesh, amid persecution characterized as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” by former UN human rights chief, Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein. 

Just this week, UNHCR reported news that hundreds of Rohingya were missing believed drowned after a shipwreck in the Andaman Sea on 8 April, off the coast of the country hosting many from the persecuted minority, Bangladesh.  

The agency said that although most Rohingya refugees want to return to Myanmar, “ongoing conflict, persecution and the absence of citizenship prospects” leave them with little hope of this being possible. 

Daniel Johnson, UN News.