Antonio guterres
UN chief urges global summit to declare 'climate emergency'
The Climate Ambition Summit, being held online, comes as the United Nations warns current commitments to tackle rises in global temperatures are inadequate.
The country has endured a five year war between Iranian-backed Huthi rebels and government forces.
Guterres said that as of mid-July schools were closed in some 160 countries, affecting more than 1 billion students, while at least 40 million children have missed out on pre-school.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said COVID-19 had put the spotlight on injustices.
The virtual meeting, hosted by Britain, aims to raise $7.4 billion for immunisation programmes stalled by the pandemic, and launch a new fundraising drive to support potential COVID-19 vaccines.
Since the call by Antonio Guterres in March for ceasefires, announcements backing the end of fighting have been made in countries including Afghanistan, the Philippines and Cameroon, but conflicts have continued to rage in Libya, Yemen and elsewhere.
According to Antonio Guterres, migrants and refugees have been 'vilified as a source of the virus -- and then denied access to medical treatment.'
Antonio Guterres has warned that the state of women’s rights was dire and said he would seek to end 'default male thinking' across the United Nations.
Guterres said civilians were being 'trapped in war-torn enclaves, starved and bombarded in clear violation of international law' as well as 'human trafficking, affecting every region in the world, preying on vulnerability and despair'.
President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar have failed to break a deadlock over key terms of a power-sharing agreement with just two weeks until they are to form a unity government.
With a full 80% of the world's refugees living in poor and developing countries, which often feel left to shoulder the heavy economic and societal costs alone, burden-sharing is high on the agenda at the meeting.
The demonstrations broke out on 1 October in anger over corruption and unemployment but have morphed into demands that the entire ruling system be upended.
US President Donald Trump has said Washington is shouldering an unfair burden of the cost of the United Nations and has pushed for reforms of the world body.
Antonio Guterres started his three-day tour of Africa's largest country in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, which is trying to roll back a major epidemic of Ebola that has claimed more than 2,000 lives since August last year.
Nearly 80,000 forest fires have been detected in Brazil since the beginning of the year -- just over half of them in the massive Amazon basin.
India's Hindu nationalist government stripped the disputed region of its autonomy earlier this week in a move that sent shock waves through South Asia and has seen the restive area come under military lockdown.
Independent rights expert said Antonio Guterres should launch an international criminal investigation into the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi last October.
Pacific island countries face an especially dire risk from climate change because of sea level rise. In some cases, low-lying countries could disappear completely.
In a strong message for action on climate change, Guterres said international political resolve was fading and it was the small island nations that were "really in the front line" and would suffer most.