7 April 2021
The holy month of Ramadan (mid-April to mid-May 2021) is marked by social and religious gatherings. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative to observe the holiday with caution and care. This document provides up-to-date public health advice that can be applied across... different national contexts to make Ramadan-related activities safer.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has been a formative experience for all humanity and a health emergency of global proportions, presenting a huge challenge to national leaders, health systems, and citizens. The findings of a new report by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) sho...ws that it has also been a test to our democracies and the respect for human rights to which countries across the OSCE committed many years ago.
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According to the Report, cascading and interlinked crises are putting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in grave danger, along with humanity’s very own survival. The Report highlights the severity and magnitude of the challenges before us. The confluence of crises, dominated by COVID-19,... climate change, and conflicts, are creating spin-off impacts on food and nutrition, health, education, the environment, and peace and security, and affecting all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Report details the reversal of years of progress in eradicating poverty and hunger, improving health and education, providing basic services, and much more. It also points out areas that need urgent action in order to rescue the SDGs and deliver meaningful progress for people and the planet by 2030.
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The pandemic presents tough choices for governments, local communities, health and school systems, as well as families and businesses: How to re-open safely? How to safeguard people’s lives and protect their livelihoods? Where to allocate scarce resources? How to protect those unable to protect th...emselves? Answers to questions like these will affect our short-term success in battling the spread of the virus and could have impacts for generations to come.
More than ever, the world needs reliable and trustworthy data and statistics to inform these important decisions. The United Nations and all member organizations of the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities (CCSA) collect and make available a wealth of information for assessing the multifaceted impacts of the pandemic. This report updates some of the global and regional trends presented in Volume I and offers a snapshot of how COVID-19 continues to affect the world today across multiple domains.
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In India, in response to the above and guided by our counterparts in the government of India, the UN agencies have developed the Novel Coronavirus Disease Joint Health Response Plan by UN Agencies and Partners, led by WHO-India, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, ...and with the support of other development partners. The UN in India is also preparing a COVID-19 Socio-economic Response and Recovery Plan, in partnership with the government.
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Mozambique registered its first COVID-19 case on 22 March 2020 and since then numbers have steadily grown over the following three months with cases now reported in all provinces. In response, a level 3 State of emergency was enacted on 1 April 2020 and has been extended until 29 July 2020, with mea...sures targeting the prevention of COVID-19 transmissions.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of investments in public health, the persistence of profound economic and social inequalities and the fragility of many key global systems and approaches.
The Guidelines on promotive and preventive mental health interventions for adolescents - Helping Adolescents thrive (HAT), provide evidence-informed recommendations on psychosocial interventions to promote mental health, prevent mental disorders, and reduce self-harm and other risk behaviours among ...adolescents.
The HAT Guidelines aims to inform policy development, service planning and the strengthening of health and education systems, and facilitate mainstreaming of adolescent mental health promotion and prevention strategies across sectors and delivery platforms.
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This new edition highlights once again the importance of collecting disaggregated data to conduct gender-based analysis in order to determine, address, reduce, and eliminate the causes of gender-related inequalities.
Humanity & Inclusion has published a report on November 20, on the difficulties children with disabilities face in accessing education in the world’s poorest countries.
Developing countries face disastrous healthcare setbacks, hunger and huge international debt as covid-19’s ‘final wave’
A global hunger crisis -- fuelled by conflict, economic turbulence and climate-related shocks -- has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of people experiencing food insecurity and hunger has risen since the onset of the pandemic. The IRC estimates that the economic downturn alone w...ill drive the number of hungry people up by an additional 35 million in 2021. Without drastic action, the economic downturn caused by COVID-19 will suspend global progress towards ending hunger by at least five years.
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In September 2021, the UN and its partners presented a response plan to mitigate the impact of the water crisis in northern and north-east Syria which requested US$200 million to assist up to 3.4 million of the over five million people estimated to be affected by the water crisis in northern Syria b...etween September 2021 and February 2022. Under the auspices of the 2022-2023 Syria Humanitarian Response Plan, this updated water response plan presents the most recent needs based on latest forecasts and is a continuation of the earlier plan presented in 2021. It covers the needs from all response modalities/areas1 for Syria, aims to assist 5 million people until December 2022 and requests $226.2 million.
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Getting on track to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. This new Road Map charts a way forward for country-level actions to achieve an ambitious set of HIV prevention targets by 2025. Those targets emerged from the 2021 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS, which the United Nations General ...Assembly adopted in June 2021 and they are underpinned by the Global AIDS Strategy (2021–2026). The Strategy sets out the principles, approaches, priority action area and programmatic targets for the global HIV response
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The world is not on track to end the AIDS pandemic. New infections are rising and AIDS deaths are continuing in too many communities. This report reveals why: inequalities are holding us back. In frank terms, the report calls the world’s attention to the painful reality that dangerous inequalities... are undermining the AIDS response and jeopardising the health security of everyone. The report highlights three specific areas of inequality for which concrete action is immediately possible—gender
inequalities and harmful masculinities driving HIV; marginalisation and criminalisation of key populations, which our data show is resulting in starkly little progress for those populations and undermining the overall response; and
inequalities for children whose lives must matter more than their market share. But this is not a counsel of despair, it is a call to action. Through bold action to confront these inequalities, we can end AIDS.
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This report makes clear that there is a path to end AIDS. Taking that path will help ensure preparedness to address other pandemic challenges, and advance progress across the Sustainable Development Goals. The data and real-world examples in the report make it very clear what that path is. It is not... a mystery. It is a choice. Some leaders are already following the path—and succeeding. It is inspiring to note that Botswana, Eswatini, Rwanda, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zimbabwe have already achieved the 95–95–95 targets, and at least 16 other countries (including eight in sub-Saharan Africa) are close to doing so.
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