“During the last six days, youngsters and households, and the infrastructure they depend on have come below assault in Dnipro, Lviv, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odesa, and different populated areas”, stated Munir Mammadzade.
With faculties and well being amenities destroyed and broken, “Ukraine’s youngest residents proceed to bear the brunt of those assaults. Our heartfelt ideas are with all these affected”, he continued.
Not less than eight faculties and 10 well being care amenities, together with a maternity hospital, had been reportedly broken previously week.
Properties have been destroyed, and thousands and thousands of kids have began 2024 “below the sounds of sirens and bombardment, stoking a well-known worry”, stated UNICEF’s prime official in Ukraine.
“The cumulative affect of reported casualties, harm to infrastructure, and relentless assaults has turned what needs to be a season of pleasure into one marred by dread, worry and sorrow.”
For youngsters whose houses have been broken or destroyed, usually with warmth and water reduce off, the scenario is especially dire as they’re going through temperatures reaching as little as -20°C.
“Practically 1,800 youngsters have been killed or injured because the escalation of the battle in Ukraine, in accordance with UN-verified stories. The true quantity is probably going far increased”, added Mr. Mammadzade.
He stated killing and maiming of kids, assaults on faculties and healthcare, are grave violations of kids’s rights and should cease.
Again up energy for Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant: IAEA
Following discussions with the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company, Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Energy Plant (ZNPP) has taken motion to make sure a direct back-up provide of electrical energy is accessible within the occasion of the principle energy line happening amid the preventing, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said on Wednesday.
Frequent energy cuts have remained a critical concern for security and safety on the Russian-held plant, which is Europe’s largest. Electrical energy provide is essential to chill reactors, even when it’s absolutely shut down.
Since August 2022 – simply months after Russia’s full-scale invasion started, the ZNPP has suffered eight occasions the place offsite energy has been misplaced, famous IAEA.
“Which means that if the principle energy provide by the 750 kV switchyard is misplaced, the back-up line will mechanically be capable of present electrical energy to the plant with out guide, and therefore delayed, intervention, supplied it stays operational,” Mr. Grossi stated.
“It is a important improvement, because it allows independence and redundancy within the website’s energy provide scheme, though total offsite provide “stays extraordinarily fragile”, he added.
Rights specialists’ alarm at loss of life row ‘experiment’ in US
The upcoming execution of a person on loss of life row in the USA utilizing the untested technique of inhaling pure nitrogen should be stopped, prime UN-appointed unbiased human rights specialists said on Wednesday.
Kenneth Eugene Smith was convicted of homicide in 1988 and sentenced to loss of life. He’s scheduled to be executed on 25 January in Alabama.
Authorities failed of their try and execute Mr. Smith in November 2022 by deadly injection.
UN Particular Rapporteur Morris Tidball-Binz and different prime rights specialists appointed by the Human Rights Council expressed concern that this primary try at nitrogen asphyxiation “would lead to a painful and humiliating loss of life”.
The specialists added that punishments which trigger pointless extreme ache or struggling “possible violate the Conference in opposition to Torture, to which the USA is a celebration”.
‘Tremendous Cereal’ increase for moms in Timor-Leste: WFP
The Timor-Leste well being ministry and the UN World Meals Programme (WFP) on Wednesday signed a new agreement to buy shares of so-called Tremendous Cereal, a specialised nutritious meals which might help ease malnutrition in pregnant and breastfeeding moms.
It’s designed to help round 10,819 pregnant and breastfeeding girls in 13 municipalities: “Ladies and women of childbearing age face the brunt of nutritious meals gaps within the nation”, stated Alba Cecilia Garzon Olivares, WFP Nation Consultant, for Timor-Leste.
“This, coupled with the affect of COVID-19, growing meals prices, and local weather shocks, locations girls at elevated threat of malnutrition”, she added.
She stated the UN’s emergency meals help company was “delighted” to associate with the Ministry of Well being to spice up lifesaving diet “and to assist a more healthy future for moms and kids in Timor-Leste,”
The initiative is a part of Timor-Leste’s broader technique to eradicate stunting and attain the Sustainable Improvement Aim (SDG) of zero starvation by 2030.
