Source: United Nations (video statements)
Joint media stakeout by Bahrain, Denmark, France, Greece, Latvia, Pakistan, Somalia, and the United Kingdom, on the situation in the Middle East including the Palestinian question.
Middle East: Israeli Settlement Expansion and Escalation – Briefing | United Nations
Source: United Nations (video statements)
Security Council briefing by Ramiz Alakbarov, Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.
The United Nations Security Council met to receive briefings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with a senior UN official reporting that Israeli planning authorities had advanced or approved over 6,000 housing units in occupied Palestinian territory during the reporting period.
“Security Council resolution 2334 (2016) calls on Israel to ‘immediately and completely cease all settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,’” Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN’s Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process said to the Security Council. “Settlement activity has, nevertheless, continued at high levels,” he added.
Alakbarov told the Council that Israeli authorities had demolished, seized or forced people to demolish 429 structures in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing 575 persons, including 290 children and 150 women. He said 28 of the structures were donor funded.
He added that on Jan 4, Israeli police forcibly evicted two Palestinian families from their apartments in the Batn Al Hawa area of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem, displacing eight people.
Alakbarov also said Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad had continued to praise terror attacks and call for additional violence against Israelis, while Israeli ministers and members of the Knesset had continued to call for re-establishment of settlements in Gaza, annexation of the West Bank and the “emigration” of Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territory.
Joint Stakeout on the Middle East including the Palestinian Question | United Nations
Source: United Nations (video statements)
Joint media stakeout by Bahrain, Denmark, France, Greece, Latvia, Pakistan, Somalia, and the United Kingdom, on the situation in the Middle East including the Palestinian question.
Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan & other topics – Daily Press Briefing (24 March 2026) | United Nations
Source: United Nations (video statements)
Noon Briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.
Highlights:
Occupied Palestinian Territory
Lebanon
Sudan
Sudan/Humanitarian
Haiti
Colombia
Central America
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Security Council/Ukraine
Exhibition
International Days
Guest
—————–
OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORY
At 3:00 p.m., the Security Council will hold an open briefing on “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.” Our Deputy Special Coordinator and Resident Coordinator at the Office of the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Ramiz Alakbarov, is expected to brief on the implementation of resolution 2334, which is related to settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.
Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace High Representative to Gaza, is expected to brief on the implementation of resolution 2803 which endorsed the US “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” last November. Meanwhile on the ground, persistent challenges remain and are preventing the UN and our NGO partners from fully responding to people’s needs.
Since the reopening of Rafah crossing last Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners have supported the medical evacuation of 16 patients who needed treatment unavailable in Gaza, along with 30 companions. UN teams have also offered services to 20 returnees. That support was provided on Thursday and Sunday, with a scheduled break for the weekend.
Dr. Ramiz Alakbarov, is engaging with authorities to ensure that the voluntary movement of people in and out of Gaza can continue safely, with dignity, and in accordance with international humanitarian law. Our support to medical evacuation, and returnees, is scheduled to resume on Thursday.
Kerem Shalom remains the only operational crossing for humanitarian and commercial cargo to enter the Strip.
We again call for the opening of additional crossings and the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian operations. In the West Bank, OCHA warns of the harsh humanitarian impact of settler attacks against Palestinians and of Israeli policies that leads to dispossession.
Over the past few days, our field teams have recorded multiple attacks by settlers that resulted in casualties, property damage and displacement among Palestinians, including recently in Batn al Hawa in Silwan neighbourhood, in East Jerusalem.
Evictions, demolitions and violence have grave physical, social, economic and emotional impacts and deepens reliance on humanitarian support. Palestinians must be protected and perpetrators be brought to justice.
LEBANON
Moving to Lebanon. We remain gravely concerned about the escalating rhetoric and ongoing hostilities between Hizbullah and Israel. More than one million people, including nearly 370,000 children, are now registered in the country as displaced. Our humanitarian colleagues on the ground tell us that strikes have been reported across Lebanon, with airstrikes overnight on Beirut’s southern suburbs, following further mass displacement orders across multiple neighborhoods.
In southern Lebanon, at least seven key crossings over the Litani River were struck in the past week, restricting people’s movement and hindering humanitarian aid from reaching people fleeing the violence. We and our humanitarian partners continue to respond to growing needs, providing food, shelter, water, medical care and protection support to families forced to flee their homes. As of yesterday, the World Food Programme (WFP) and its partners have distributed 1.7 million hot meals and 50,000 ready-to-eat kits.
Our partners working in education and protection are also helping displaced children by providing psychosocial support, recreational activities and alternative ways of learning. We reiterate that there is simply no military solution to the conflict. We continue to call for de-escalation and urge all sides to avail themselves of diplomatic channels available to them and to recommit to the full implementation of Security Council resolution 1701.
Full Highlights: https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/noon-briefing-highlight?date=2026-03-24
Ukraine: “Nearly 1500 days of death, destruction and despair” – Briefing | United Nations
Source: United Nations (video statements)
Briefing a Security Council session on maintenance of peace and security of Ukraine, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo said four years since the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “the violence is worse than ever,” and noted that “since February 2022, the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has verified that 15,364 civilians, including 775 children, have been killed in Ukraine.
DiCarlo said, “over the winter, damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure brought the country’s energy grid to the brink of total collapse,” as “60 percent of gas production capacity has been destroyed, and all the country’s power stations damaged, leading to persistent disruptions in electricity, heating and water across the country.”
She noted that the Russian Federation “has also reported attacks impacting civilians and civilian infrastructure,” including over the weekend of 14 to 16 March, when local authorities reported “the largest Ukrainian drone attack targeting Moscow to date.”
Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher, for his part said, “strikes on energy and other vital infrastructure are cutting civilians off from the basics of survival.”
Fletcher said, “tens of thousands of families across the country are left in the dark and cold for weeks on end. These attacks reflect a sustained pattern of damage to the systems on which civilians depend to survive, with humanitarians increasingly stepping in to fill the gaps left by the deterioration of essential services.”
Fletched stressed that despite “immense challenges and the risks to humanitarian operations, and our people, help is getting through.”
He said, “in January alone, we and our partners reached nearly one million people with food, cash assistance, medical care, shelter and protection. Over a cruel, cold winter, around 100 humanitarian organizations supported more than 1.6 million people. And in recent days, our interagency convoy reached the frontline community in the oblast of Kharkivska, delivering help to some 500 residents in an area with no pharmacies and limited availability of basic services.”
Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya told the Council that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “is literally flabbergasted by the spotlight shifting from Ukraine and his own heroic persona, over to the situation surrounding the escalation in the Middle East, a situation which objectively needs the close attention of the international community.”
Nebenzya said, “instead of showing concern for his own people, his own country, he’s trying to remind his Western sponsors of how useful he is at any cost. Otherwise, God forbid, the money his regularly pocketed and put into the pockets of his associates will flow from Ukraine to the Gulf, which is far from Ukraine.”
He said, “clearly, what’s more important for Kyiv today is to be involved in any war, rather than seek a path to peace back home statement.”
Ukrainian Ambassador Andrii Melnyk for his part said, “the Kremlin is not just providing Tehran with intelligence support, including satellite imagery and other crucial data that facilitate targeting of US military assets across the Middle East, there is, moreover, enough evidence that Russia is now transferring modernized Shahed type drones to Iran, drawing on its own production capabilities based on licensed Iranian designs. The same Shahed drones that Tehran was sending to Moscow since the beginning of the war, 2022, to murder Ukrainian civilians, are now produced in Russia and sent back both to destroy oil and gas infrastructure as the backbone of the economy in the Gulf state, and to kill American soldiers.”
Melnyk said, “this axis of evil between Moscow and Tehran constitutes an enormous threat to international security.”
He said, “their military cooperation is truly alarming. The United States and the international community must take this threat seriously and act before it is too late. With those Russian drones the Tehran regime will be capable of waging this war for a very long period, destabilizing not just the region, but the whole global economy.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Melnyk said, “demands that Ukraine abandon without a fight territories in the Donetsk region that Moscow have failed to occupy over 12 years of its aggression” and is “turning such ultimatums into preconditions for negotiations,” and is “deliberately obstructing the peace process.”
He said this was “one of the biggest stumbling blocks on the way to a peaceful resolution.”
Racial Discrimination: “The Remedy is Solidarity” – UN Chief | United Nations
Source: United Nations (video statements)
Remarks by António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the 74th plenary meeting of the 80th session of the General Assembly on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
—
António Guterres, said, “Racial discrimination is a violation of human rights and human dignity. It is a learned behaviour that is both pervasive and deeply destructive.”
He also said, , “I am deeply troubled by how racism and xenophobia are being mainstreamed on digital platforms and in political discourse. What might begin with dog whistles — coded messages meant to embolden other bigots — can quickly turn into full-throated hate speech. We know where this road leads: to further injustice, violence, and even worse. The remedy is solidarity. Governments, institutions, businesses and communities must work together to safeguard the dignity, justice, equality, and rights of every person.”
Lebanon: Children are paying devastating price – Press Conference | United Nations
Source: United Nations (video statements)
UNICEF senior official Ted Chaiban told reporters that 118 children have been killed and 372 more have been injured in Lebanon since the escalation began –“the equivalent of a classroom of children every day that’s either killed or injured.”
UNICEF’s Deputy Executive Director Ted Chaiban briefed reporters on his recent visit to Lebanon.
He said, “Twenty-three days into the escalating conflict in the Middle East, children across the region are paying a devastating price. A further descent into a wider and more protracted conflict would be catastrophic for millions more.”
According the UNICEF, more than 2,100 children have been killed or injured, including 206 children killed in Iran, 118 in Lebanon, four children killed in Israel and one in Kuwait. “These are the reported figures and they are expected to rise as the violence continues. That’s an average of approximately 87 children either killed or injured every day since the beginning of the war,” Chaiban added.
The UNICEF deputy chief also said, “alongside the dead and the wounded, we are witnessing rapid displacement across several countries, driven by relentless bombardments and evacuation orders that have emptied communities and entire urban areas.”
He continued, “In Iran, there are estimates of up to 3.2 million people that have been displaced, including 864,000 children. In Lebanon, more than a million people are displaced, including 400,000 children, making up nearly one third of the displaced. Many families are taking refuge in public buildings, including schools. 90,000 Syrians have returned to Syria since the onset of the conflict, alongside several thousand Lebanese.”
“Across the Middle East, around 44.8 million children were already living in conflict affected settings before this war and the consequences of what is unfolding now will be long lasting for them,” Chaiban said.
The UNICEF deputy chief highlighted that more than 350 public schools are used as shelters, disrupting the education for around 100,000 students.
He said, “though efforts are on the way to provide online education and other ways to access children with learning and teaching, as we know schools provide more than learning. They offer structure, protection and continuity. So when schools are closed, are repurposed, those stabilizing elements are lost.”
UNICEF and Partners have been responding to the crisis, Chaiban said, adding that the Fund has reached 151,000 IDPs in more than 250 shelters, and in hard-to-reach areas with essential non-food items.
“We’re providing water and sanitation support to 188 of the shelters out of the 600, serving around 46,000 people. We’ve pre-positioned high energy biscuits, ready to use complementary foods to prevent wasting among children. Some 13,000 children in shelters have received education and learning materials,” he added.
On funding gap, the UNICEF deputy chief said, “the UN issued a flash appeal for $308 million. The UNICEF portion of that’s required is 48.2 million. This is three-month flash appeal. And yet for both the UN and for UNICEF, there’s about an 85 percent funding gap. So, you know, a key demand is for support to be able to sustain the response, but also essential services that are critical for the population, and for the displaced in particular.”
The children’s fund called for “a cessation of hostilities and protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure,” reminding all parties of their obligations under international humanitarian law.
Chaiban said, “as the Secretary-General has indicated, we need a de-escalation and a political way forward to this war.”
He also called for “safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access” to support missions that are being undertaken to go south and the urgent financial support to sustain the response.
Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime Against Humanity – Press Conference | United Nations
Source: United Nations (video statements)
Press briefing by AU / Africa Group, led by Ghana, on the proposed resolution to be tabled and considered in the GA on Wednesday, 25th March during the GA commemorative event marking the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
International Day of Zero Waste 2026 – UN Chief Message | United Nations
Source: United Nations (video statements)
Video message by António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, on the International Day of Zero Waste (30 March 2026).
"The world wastes far too much food.
Every day, we throw away enough to prepare 1 billion meals — while letting 9 percent of humanity go hungry.
We are putting our climate, ecosystems and health at risk.
And threatening our ability to feed ourselves in the future.
That’s why this year’s International Day of Zero Waste spotlights the mounting food waste crisis — and calls on each of us to take action.
Consumers can make a big impact with small changes in their shopping and cooking habits.
Retailers can optimize their operations and redistribute surplus food.
Cities can scale organic waste separation and strengthen procurement for schools and hospitals.
And national governments can drive systemic change by addressing food waste in their climate
action and biodiversity plans and forging public-private partnerships.
Through initiatives like the Food Waste Breakthrough and No Organic Waste, both launched at
COP30, we can halve food waste by 2030, cut its methane emissions by up to 7 percent, and
build circular, resilient food systems.
Beyond protecting our planet, these efforts will create green jobs;
Reduce food insecurity and climate impacts;
And prevent up to 1 trillion US dollars in economic losses each year.
We cannot take food for granted.
Together, let’s build the zero-waste food systems we need to nourish both people and planet."
More info:https://www.un.org/en/observances/zero-waste-day
Racial Discrimination, Lebanon & other topics – Daily Briefing (23 March 2026) | United Nations
Source: United Nations (video statements)
Noon Briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.
Highlights:
– State of the Global Climate/Report
– World Meteorological Day
– Racial Discrimination
– Lebanon
– West Bank
– Sudan
– South Sudan
– Security Council/Afternoon
– Ukraine
– Senior Personnel Appointment
– Financial Contribution
– Guest
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
This morning, the Secretary-General addressed the General Assembly event marking the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. He said that many of the solutions to confront racial discrimination are being weakened as some governments dismantle anti-racist policies and practices and leaders try to rewrite history.
He said he was deeply troubled by how racism and xenophobia are being mainstreamed on digital platforms and in political discourse. What might begin with dog whistles, coded messages meant to embolden other bigots, can quickly turn into full-throated hate speech.
Volker Türk, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, also spoke and said that race remains the most common ground for discrimination globally. Yet many countries still lack anti-racism legislation, and not even a quarter have comprehensive anti-discrimination laws. And he warned that hate speech is spreading unchecked, even in societies that pride themselves on tolerance, adding that racism is not only unjust and unlawful; it is morally and intellectually bankrupt.
LEBANON
The UN is deeply concerned about continuing attacks on healthcare, including health workers, health facilities and ambulances. As of today, the WHO [World Health Organization] reports 64 attacks on healthcare facilities, resulting in 51 deaths and 91 injuries, further straining an already fragile health system.
Displacement also continues to surge. Our humanitarian colleagues tell us that more than 1.2 million people, or around one in every five residents, have been forced to flee their homes. More than 130,000 people, including some 46,000 children, are currently sheltering in more than 600 collective sites nationwide, most of which are already at full capacity. Our humanitarian colleagues warn that these figures will rise further as hostilities intensify, with Israeli authorities announcing plans to escalate ground operations along the blue line.
Strikes on critical infrastructure also continue. Reports indicate that yesterday’s destruction of the Qasmieh bridge in the Sour district has further isolated southern Lebanon from the rest of the country. This comes amid a broader pattern of strikes on crossings over the Litani River, with three bridges destroyed by Israeli forces in just the last 10 days. Between the Sour and Saida districts, only one bridge remains functional, raising concerns over people’s ability to flee and access assistance. Such destruction may also impede our peacekeepers’ ability to fulfill their mandate under Security Council resolution 1701.
Full Highlights: https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/noon-briefing-highlight?date=2026-03-23