Switzerland

GENEVA, Sep 15 (APP): A Pakistani diplomat Wednesday categorically rejected India's sweeping allegations about Pakistan's treatment of its minorities and involvement in terrorism, and called New Delhi the principal sponsor, financier and abettor of state terrorism.

GENEVA, Sep 14 (APP): Pakistan Tuesday denounced India's "unlawful" measures to deprive the Kashmiri people of their right to self-determination, warning that the Indian state machinery has turned into a "veritable arm of oppression" in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

GENEVA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The United Nations' rights chief lamented on Monday that efforts to gain access to China's Xinjiang region to probe reports of serious violations against Muslim Uyghurs have not succeeded, adding that she was finalising a report on the situation.

"I regret that I am not able to report progress on my efforts to seek meaningful access to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," Michelle Bachelet said at the opening of the Human Rights Council on Monday in Geneva.

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations is hosting a high-level donors conference on Monday to drum up emergency funds for Afghanistan after last month’s Taliban takeover of the country that stunned the world.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was leading the world body’s call for more than $600 million for the rest of this year in a “flash appeal” for Afghans after their country’s government was toppled by the Taliban and U.S. and NATO forces exited the 20-year war in a chaotic departure.

GENEVA, Sept 10 (Reuters) - The U.N. rights office on Friday said that the Taliban response to peaceful marches in Afghanistan has been increasingly violent, with authorities using live ammunition, batons and whips and causing the deaths of at least four protesters.

Protests and demonstrations, often led by women, pose a challenge to the new Islamist Taliban government as it seeks to consolidate control after seizing the capital Kabul nearly a month ago. 

GENEVA, Sept 10 (Reuters) - A Swiss criminal court convicted Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, a power broker in international sports, of forgery on Friday in a trial over whether he used a bogus Kuwaiti coup plot to gain advantage over political rivals.

The sheikh had denied all the charges in the case, which has divided the Kuwaiti ruling family and prompted Sheikh Ahmad, 58, to step back from some of his public sporting roles, including membership of the International Olympic Committee.

ZURICH, Sept 4 (Reuters) - The United Nations will convene an international aid conference in Geneva on Sept. 13 to help avert what U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called a "looming humanitarian catastrophe".

"We need the international community to stand together and support the Afghan people," Guterres said in a post on Twitter announcing the conference that he said would seek a swift scale-up in funding for humanitarian relief.

GENEVA, Sept 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United Nations warned that weather-related disasters have skyrocketed over the past half-century, causing far more damage even as better warning systems have meant fewer deaths.

A report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) examined mortality and economic losses from weather, climate and water extremes between 1970 and 2019.

It found that such disasters have increased fivefold during that period, driven largely by a warming planet, and warned the upward trend would continue.

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. weather agency says the world — and especially urban areas — experienced a brief, sharp drop in emissions of air pollutants last year amid lockdown measures and related travel restrictions put in place over the coronavirus pandemic.

The World Meteorological Organization, releasing its first ever Air Quality and Climate Bulletin on Friday, cautioned that the reductions in pollution were patchy — and many parts of the world showed levels that outpaced air quality guidelines. Some types of pollutants continued to emerge at regular or even higher levels.

GENEVA, Sept 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Over half of all people in the world have no social protections, the United Nations said, even after the pandemic spurred countries to offer more services to their populations.

In a Wednesday report on the state of social protection globally, the UN’s International Labour Organization said that 4.1 billion people were living without any social safety net of any kind.