UN News Today 23 March 2026 |

Strait of Hormuz impact is still expanding, warns UN trade agency 

Since the start of the Middle East conflict with Israeli and US strikes on Iran on 28 February, concerns have been growing over rising oil and commodity prices.

But now there’s concern over rising production costs for fertilisers and particularly nitrogen-based ones, which depend heavily on liquefied gas produced by States in the Gulf region.

This is already putting pressure on agricultural production and productivity, with likely consequences for global food prices, says Frida Youssef, from UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD.

“It’s affecting transport, its affecting energy, it’s affecting food and also cost and availability of all these. So, these all together would have an impact on the public finances of countries, as well as cost of living and household.”

According to UNCTAD, traffic in the Strait of Hormuz where the Persian Gulf narrows has fallen from around 130 ships a day before the crisis to single digits in early March, a decline of more than 95 per cent.

Today, the Strait is not formally closed, but severely constrained, amid multiple Iranian attacks on shipping since war erupted that have spooked global energy markets and driven up prices.

“The disruption is no longer confined to the Strait of Hormuz; it is spreading across regional shipping routes and affecting critical supply lines” Ms. Youssef insisted. 

She noted that vessels are having to be rerouted, meaning extended journey times and higher shipping costs. This is also impacting humanitarian agencies who face slower, more expensive and less predictable aid shipments.

UNICEF aid convoy reaches southern Lebanon communities in need

To Lebanon, where a UN Children’s Fund convoy has reached vulnerable communities in the south of the country, who’ve been told to evacuate by the Israeli military, as the Middle East war continues to unfold.

The UNICEF convoy has delivered lifesaving supplies including hygiene kits, drinking water, first aid kits, water purification tablets and chlorine.

The UN agency says that it’s crucially important to support children and families who’ve endured weeks of Israeli missile strikes, launched in response to Hezbollah rocket fire.

In Beirut, the agency’s Christophe Boulierac explains how the humanitarian mission went ahead, despite access problems caused by the bombing of key bridges and roads south of Lebanon’s Litani River:

“The bombing of the bridges and of the road have not stopped this convoy, but of course, it’s complicating this process, and humanitarian access is one of the key priorities, of course, as well as the need to protect children. So many children have been killed since 2 March 2, so many have been injured, and this is also one of our calls, in addition to the fact to allow humanitarian access to reach those who are in deep need.”

UNICEF’s work is being held back by a lack of financial support; today, it’s $48 million appeal is only 14 per cent funded.

UN weather agency warns of record ‘climate imbalance’

All-time high greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to drive heat records on land and sea, with long-standing consequences for all of us, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned on Monday.

After a scorching decade, the UN weather agency said that the planet’s climate is “more out of balance than at any time in observed history”.

“Between 2015 and 2025, we experienced the hottest 11 years on record,” said WMO’s deputy executive secretary, Ko Barrett.

She said that 2025 was 1.43 °C above the 1850 to 1900 baseline. 

Last year also broke an ocean heat record, the WMO chief added, while glaciers continue to retreat and ice melts.

According to WMO, concentrations of three key greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – reached record levels in 2024, the last year for which there are consolidated global numbers.

This marked the single-largest year-on-year increase.

Ed de Bray, UN News.