International News
Mayerlín Vergara Pérez from Colombia is the 2020 laureate of the Nansen Refugee Award, the UN refugee agency announced today. The Caribbean Regional Coordinator for the Renacer Foundation has spent more than two decades helping the non-profit pursue eradication of sexual exploitation and abuse of children and adolescents.
The United Nations and humanitarian partners today released a tri-national action plan seeking $10.4 million to support Government responses over the next year to urgent needs in the border area between Colombia, Peru and Brazil, which currently has the world’s highest COVID-19 mortality rates per 100,000 people.
Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the nineteenth Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture, “The Rise of Renewables: Shining a Light on a Sustainable Future”, in New York today:
Polio immunization campaigns have resumed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, months after COVID-19 left 50 million children without their polio vaccines, UNICEF said today. There is concern that up to 1 million children in Afghanistan could miss out as door-to-door vaccinations are not possible in some areas.
Officials at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) say locust swarms linked to climate change remain a serious threat to food security in parts of East Africa, India and Pakistan. United Nations agencies are helping affected areas by providing data on weather, climate and the desert locust life cycle.