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Source: United Nations (video statements)

Acute food insecurity is likely to worsen across 16 countries and territories in the coming months, UN agencies warn in a new report calling for urgent humanitarian action in response. Five facts about this dire situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJkAx0gXsSc

Source: United Nations (video statements)

Remarks by António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the launch of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility.

"Presidente Lula,
Excellencies,
It is an honour to join you for the launch of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility.

I thank President Lula and the Government and people of Brazil for their leadership – here in Belém, in the heart of the Amazon, and centre of climate action.

Tropical forests breathe life into our planet.
Yet they remain under relentless assault – treated as short-term profit, not long-term value.
Last year, the world lost the equivalent of 18 football fields of tropical primary forest – every minute.

The Tropical Forest Forever Facility is a bold mechanism to make standing forests more valuable than cleared land – aligning conservation with opportunity, and solidarity with shared prosperity.

Excellencies,
Tropical forests are vital to climate stability.
They protect water and soils, store and remove billions of tonnes of carbon, regulate rainfall, shape weather patterns across continents, and sustain millions of people.
Without tropical forests, there is no path to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
We are dangerously close to a tipping point that could push these ecosystems beyond recovery.

Crossing that line would unleash droughts, fires, and biodiversity loss on a scale humanity cannot control.
We have pledged to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030.
Now we must deliver.

That means supporting forest nations – not as a favour, but as a shared duty;
Cutting emissions from deforestation;
And preserving forests’ immense capacity to store carbon.
By rewarding countries for keeping forests standing, we boost resilience.

By supporting Indigenous Peoples and forest communities, we advance climate justice and safeguard cultures whose knowledge has stewarded nature for millennia.
And by mobilizing long-term, predictable, and affordable finance, we close one of the most persistent gaps in global climate action.
Fairness, inclusion and integrity must be front and centre.
Finance must reach the ground – those protecting forests with their hands, hearts, and heritage.

Excellencies,
Today’s launch is a statement of solidarity and hope.
It shows that developing countries – while bearing the heaviest impacts of the climate crisis – are leading with solutions for all.
From the Amazon to the Congo Basin to Southeast Asia, forest nations prove that protecting nature can drive growth, stability, and dignity.
Now the world must respond with matching ambition.

Governments, development banks, and the private sector must join forces to close the finance gap, unlock investment for sustainable forest economies and scale up monitoring and restoration.
Together, we can ensure tropical forests stand forever – as living pillars of climate stability, biodiversity, resilience, and peace.

Thank you."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgCVbP2UMMs

Source: United Nations (video statements)

“In this fragile environment, withdrawal of resources and capacity is imprudent at best, catastrophic at worst,” UN Women chief Sima Sami Bahous told the Security Council, stressing that South Sudan’s gender-based violence crisis – threatening 2.7 million people -makes continued peacekeeping support essential.

Bahous said UN Mission in South Sudan documented 260 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in 2024, including “rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, forced abortion and forced marriage, with the highest number recorded in Western Equatoria State.”

She described a recent incident in Warrap State in which armed youth surrounded a girls’ boarding school seeking revenge for a cattle raid. “100 schoolgirls were trapped inside. They feared abduction or worse,” she said. “Fortunately, UN peacekeepers intervened. They de-escalated the situation. They freed the girls.”

“For those 100 girls, those peacekeepers could not have been more essential, nor their courage and skill more life changing,” she added, cautioning that any reduction of mandates or resources would be “imprudent at best, catastrophic at worst.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OualQ3VRHQ

Source: United Nations (video statements)

Remarks by António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the Belém Climate Summit – 10 years of the Paris Agreement NDCs and financing.

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Marking the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, Secretary-General António Guterres said, “we need an acceleration plan to close the gaps” in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ambition and implementation, “and that acceleration must start here in Belém.”

Addressing the event, on the sidelines of the World Leaders Climate Action Summit in Belém, Brazil, the Secretary-General said, “since the Paris Agreement was adopted ten years ago, Nationally Determined Contributions have been a barometer of countries’ climate ambitions. The latest NDCs represent some progress. But we must be honest in the Summit of truth. The plans and policies on the table are still far from enough.”

He said, “at COP30, let’s renew the great promise the world made a decade ago in Paris – by kickstarting a new decade of implementation and acceleration.”

NDCs are commitments made by countries under the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change impacts.

The Belém Climate Summit took place 6 and 7 November, and brought together heads of state and government, ministers, and leaders of international organizations to discuss pressing climate change challenges and commitments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su2iNmfoTm0