Daily Wrap

The UN is providing “multifaceted support” to Mali ahead of this weekend’s constitutional referendum, the head of its peacekeeping mission in the country, MINUSMA, said in a briefing to the Security Council on Friday. 

UN humanitarians continue bringing life-saving aid to survivors of the flooding from the Kakhovka Dam, but they’ve warned that hundreds of thousands more people in the country’s south face severe water shortages. 

The UN refugee and migration agencies are calling for urgent and decisive action to prevent further deaths at sea following Wednesday’s tragedy in the Mediterranean. With 78 bodies retrieved, 104 people rescued, and hundreds more missing and feared dead, the 14 June shipwreck off the coast of Greece is one of the worst and most deadly in years.

Words are not enough to alleviate the multiple crises afflicting Haiti, said the President of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Friday, in an appeal for urgent international action.

Sea ice is reducing at an unprecedented rate, prompting polar scientists to call for an urgent increase in research and observation, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Friday. 

Women’s land rights are in the spotlight ahead of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, observed on 17 June, at events around the world, from Kenya to Viet Nam, including a high-level event at UN Headquarters in New York on Friday.

With the conflict between rival militaries in Sudan entering its third month, the people of Darfur are “trapped in a living nightmare”, the UN’s top aid official has said.