UN

The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, Ian Fry, says the huge human cost of the climate crisis is being ignored.

He told the Human Rights Council that the long-term costs are not being addressed.

Mr Fry implored agencies to provide lasting support for people impacted by climate change.

Recovery work is being hampered by the Covid-19 outbreak in the country with 139 cases now confirmed across villages on Tongatapu and Vava'u.

The UN resident coordinator responsible for Tonga, Sanaka Samarasinha, said the initial response from the international community has been overwhelming but there still a long road to recovery ahead.

He said today the UN will deploy the first two disaster response experts - a water and sanitation expert and a disaster response co-ordinator - requested by the Tongan government.

Between 2020 and mid-2021 cyber-attackers stole more than $50m (£37m) of digital assets, investigators found.

Such attacks are an "important revenue source" for Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile programme, they said.

The findings were reportedly handed to the UN's sanctions committee on Friday.

The cyber-attacks targeted at least three cryptocurrency exchanges in North America, Europe and Asia.

“The resources that we have in the ground are not enough”, Sione Hufanga explained, in an interview on Saturday with UN News. “We ought to always look at the situation and ask, have we done enough, for this very small country, isolated in the Pacific islands?”

The underwater volcano eruption of a week ago, is believed to be the largest volcanic event to occur for 30 years.

The huge, 20 km high mushroom cloud of smoke and ash, and the tsunami that followed, affected 84,000 people, more than 80 per cent of the population of the South Pacific country.

The facility in Saada, a stronghold of the rebel Houthi movement in north-western Yemen, was hit on Friday.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that the "escalation needs to stop".

In a statement on Saturday, the Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in the country denied it had carried out the air strike.

The coalition also said the site was not on a list of targets to avoid that had been agreed with the UN and had not been reported by the Red Cross.

The resolution, put forward by Israel and Germany, was passed without a vote by the 193-member General Assembly.

The move sends "a strong... message against the denial or the distortion of these historical facts", the UN said.

Six million Jewish people died in the Holocaust - Nazi Germany's campaign to eradicate Europe's Jewish population.

On Thursday, the UN General Assembly said it "rejects and condemns without any reservation any denial of The Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part".

Initial reports suggested no mass casualties on the main island of Tongatapu, but two people were reported missing and the capital Nuku'alofa was badly damaged, as were resorts and homes along the island's western beaches, it said.

"Further volcanic activity cannot be ruled out," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in the update on Monday, reporting only minor injuries but emphasising that formal assessments, especially of the outer islands, had yet to be released with communications badly hit.

Homes and the local market were burned during the overnight raid on Solhan.

No group has said it was behind the violence, but Islamist attacks are increasingly common in the country, especially in border regions.

The UN chief said he was "outraged" by the incident.

António Guterres "strongly condemns the heinous attack and underscores the urgent need for the international community to redouble support to member states in the fight against violent extremism and its unacceptable human toll," his spokesperson said.

In a letter to the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Blinken called for a 90-day reduction in violence and a transitional government formed from both sides.

Blinken also said no decision had been made about whether to stick to a planned US troop withdrawal by 1 May.

He called on President Ghani to show "urgent leadership".

Blinken's letter, a copy of which was obtained by the BBC on Sunday, reflected the difficult position the US finds itself in as it reviews whether to withdraw its last 2500 troops.

Addressing the virtual meeting, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the goal of providing vaccines to all as “the biggest moral test before the global community”, underlining that everyone, everywhere must be included.  

“Defeating COVID19, now that we have begun to have the scientific capacity to do so, is more important than ever”, he said.