NEWS

A year after North and South Korea made history by marching together in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is considering a request for unified Korean teams to enter qualification for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. IOC

UN chief António Guterres said Palestinians have endured “more than a half-century of occupation and denial of their legitimate right to self-determination” adding that Israelis and Palestinians continued to “suffer from deadly cycles of violence.” UNIFEED

The biggest UN humanitarian convoy yet to operate inside Syria has successfully distributed aid to 40,000 desperate people in a hard-to-access desert camp at Rukban, near the country’s southern border with Jordan, the organization announced on Friday. UNTV CH

Cross-border movements of displaced communities from South Sudan’s Yei area are raising concerns about the risk of the Ebola virus being transported across the border into South Sudan. Currently living in a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, some displaced people often crisscross the porous border in search of food from the homes they fled in Yei due to unrest. UNMISS

United Nations aid agencies with their national and international humanitarian partners launched today the 2019 Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis. The appeal seeks to raise US$ 920 million to meet the massive needs of more than 900,000 refugees from Myanmar and over 330,000 vulnerable Bangladesh's host communities. UNTV CH

A surge in sexual violence in South Sudan’s Unity state targeting victims as young as eight years old has underlined the need for urgent measures from the Government to protect them and bring perpetrators to justice, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Friday. UNTV CH

Inspired by US swimming legend Michael Phelps, 24-year old Syrian refugee Eid Aljazairli, who lives in London, is training for the Olympics. Barely 12 months ago, he couldn’t swim. UNHCR

UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Libya Maria do Valle Ribeiro said the humanitarian response plan for the country in 2019 was seeking 200 million USD to target the needs of some 552,000 people. UNIFEED

The World Health Organization (WHO) today reported that cases of measles are on the rise and urged action to ensure that people be protected through vaccines. Dr. Katherine O’Brien, Director of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals for WHO, outlined guidelines for governments and individual families, stressing that all people must have access to scientific information on the effectiveness of the measles vaccine. WHO

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza announced the formation of a new group at the United Nations to defend the “principles of international law” and the rights of peoples to “live in peace, without interference, without interventions, without the threat of the use of force.” UNIFEED