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An all-out Israeli invasion of Rafah could force the closure of the aid lifeline from Rafah, “but we will never leave the people of Gaza”, UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths said on Tuesday. His expression of solidarity with Gazans came amid deepening concerns among humanitarians and the international community about the fate of some 1.5 million civilians uprooted by more than four months of heavy Israeli bombardment in the enclave, sparked by Hamas-led attacks in Israel on 7 October. Mr. Griffiths reiterated that it was an “illusion” to say that anywhere was safe in Gaza, but that UN aid teams and their partners would do their utmost to help displaced civilians, wherever they decided to seek shelter. “We are completely attached to their survival,” he told UN News’s Daniel Johnson

Radio Miraya has been broadcasting across South Sudan since 2006 and in that time its core message of peace hasn’t changed – and it must be a successful formula, since seven in 10 people in the country listen to it. For World Radio Day, celebrated on 13 February every year, we caught up with Ben Dotsei Malor who’s just returned to UN Headquarters in New York from a posting to Juba, where Radio Miraya is based. Here he is now, sharing his thoughts on his time there, with UN News’s Daniel Johnson.  

Sharing borders with Gaza, Israel, Libya and Sudan, Egypt has taken a lead role in providing lifesaving aid in the region. Since the outbreak of conflict in Sudan last April and the four-month-old war in Gaza, both the Government and the Egyptian Red Crescent Society have been key actors in helping to assist millions of civilians caught in the crossfire. The sheer volume of aid delivered to Gaza has led Egypt to introduce innovations and strategies to get emergency supplies and services to almost two million Palestinians stuck in the enclave, which faces near constant Israeli bombardment alongside ongoing ground operations. UN News’s Khaled Haridy Mohamed talked with Elena Panova, UN Resident Coordinator in Egypt, and Neveen Alqabbaj, Egypt’s Minister of Social Solidarity Society and vice-president of the Egyptian Red Crescent Society, about how aid is delivered in times of crisis.

Nearly half of the world’s migratory species are in decline and the global extinction risk is increasing, a new UN report has revealed.  Some whale species, sea turtles and jaguars are among the animals at risk, according to the first-ever State of the World’s Migratory Species report, launched at the opening of a major UN wildlife conservation conference taking place this week in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.  The report was issued by Secretariat of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), a UN biodiversity treaty.  For more on the findings, UN News’s Anton Uspensky spoke to Amy Fraenkel, the CMS Executive Secretary, who began by providing the background to the treaty.

As war rages in Gaza, another simmering conflict risks escalating on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon – which is why the UN peacekeeping mission there is so important. UNIFIL – the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon – has three important responsibilities: helping civilians affected by the war, protecting the so-called “Blue Line” that separates both countries and maintaining a channel of communication between them. The task isn’t easy though, amid daily exchanges of fire that have uprooted an estimated 86,000 people in southern Lebanon since 7 October and left three UN “blue helmets” injured and their base damaged.  For the latest on how UNIFIL’s peacekeepers are working to prevent violence from spreading, UN News’s Nancy Sarkis sat down with Andrea Tenenti, UNIFIL Spokesperson and Chief of Strategic Communications and Public Information (SCPI).

The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNWRA) serves almost six million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.  UN News’s Khaled Mohamed spoke with Dorothee Klaus, who’s the top official for the agency in Lebanon, which is home to around 250,000 Palestinians. Explaining the dire, immediate impact of funding cuts and the current suspension of aid by many key donors, she said UNRWA operations could ‘come to a halt’ in March.

The UN agency assisting Palestinians, UNRWA, will continue delivering services as best it can to the people of Gaza and will play no part in “pushing” them across the border into Egypt. That’s according to UNRWA Spokesperson Adnan Abu Hasna, who told UN News he hoped there would be no ground operation by Israel inside the now densely populated border town of Rafah, where around 1.5 million are sheltering. Ezzat El-Ferri asked him to explain why it was not feasible to move Gazans across the border to relative safety in Egypt. 

February 6 marks the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, or FGM. In 2024, some 4.4 million girls are still considered at risk from this horrific act of gender-based violence. “Even one mutilation is one too many” said UN chief António Guterres in his message marking the day.  According to Dr. Wisal Ahmed, the UN reproductive health agency’s (UNFPA) Global Coordinator for the FGM Trust Fund, health complications due to the barbaric practice add up to around $1.4 billion each year.  She told UN News’s Pauline Batista that engaging in “dialogue, having a conversation” is fundamental to end FGM as a practice.  

Thanks to careful forward planning, Madagascar is better prepared now to deal with the impacts of the current El Niño phenomenon and climate change, as the south of the country endures a long-standing humanitarian crisis, says Reena Ghelani, the UN’s Climate Crisis Coordinator for the El Niño response. More people are expected to go hungry in February as the food security situation deteriorates, mainly due to an expected lack of rain as an impact of El Niño.   The UN says that more than 262,000 children under five are acutely malnourished across the south. Daniel Dickinson spoke to Ms. Ghali as she visited an irrigation project in the Anosy region. He began by asking her to explain what the El Niño phenomenon is.

Restoring the social and economic conditions that existed in Gaza before the current conflict will take tens of billions of dollars and several decades, according to the UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD. Its latest report revealed that Gaza’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined by $655 million last year, roughly 25 per cent, mainly due to the onset of war following the 7 October terror attacks.  UN News’s Khaled Mohamed spoke to Rami Al Azzeh, an economist with the Assistance to the Palestinian People Unit at UNCTAD, who underscored the need for the international community to act now, given the level of destruction. 

Criminal networks in Southeast Asia are growing their illegal operations in through the innovative use of technology, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The trafficking of people and drugs as well as money laundering and fraudulent scam activities are being boosted by the use of cryptocurrencies, the dark web, artificial intelligence and social media platforms, as criminals continue to base their operations in parts of the region where the rule of law is weak or non-existent.  Laura Gil asked UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Jeremy Douglas, how the landscape of transnational organized crime in the region is being changed by technology.

According to energy industry experts, we’re in the middle of a massive expansion of renewable energy sources, and it’s likely to continue. At the UN climate conference in Dubai at the end of last year, governments committed to tripling global capacity by 2030, and the International Energy Agency, for one, is bullish about that goal being achieved. But will developing countries benefit?  Moritz Brauchle is the managing director of Africa GreenTec Madagascar, a social enterprise which provides sustainable energy solutions to some of the 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa currently living without any access to electricity. He explained to Conor Lennon from UN News the advantages of minigrids and how they are breathing new life into communities that were formerly consigned to darkness once the sun went down.