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What if the world tackled inequality with the same kind of scientific firepower it has brought to the climate crisis?

Four in five households in Lebanon struggle to afford basic necessities today, with children increasingly going without food, missing school and being pushed into work as conflict compounds years of economic crisis. “I wanted to buy clothes for my children, but I could not. I also wanted to enrol them in school, but I could not afford that either,” said one father of four, cited on Wednesday by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The UN refugee agency, UNHCHR, has voiced concern over Malaysia’s decision to return 1,476 people to Myanmar amid an ongoing civil war and a dire human rights and humanitarian situation.

The UN chief on Tuesday strongly condemned an airstrike that reportedly killed at least 50 people at a market in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and called for those responsible to be held to account.

Haji Mohammad Shafi spent 44 years in Pakistan before he was forced to leave. He sold everything he owned and returned to Afghanistan with his five children, arriving with almost nothing.

Food waste is helping to fuel global warming, one half-eaten sandwich at a time. 

Amid rising tensions, extreme weather impacts and strikes on nuclear infrastructure in war-torn Iran and Ukraine, UN Member States are returning to the core issue of disarmament on Tuesday, closing out the General Assembly’s High-Level Week with expected calls for greater safeguards.

The Security Council is meeting in New York on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Tuesday, where clashes between Government forces and M23 rebels continue in the east despite a series of peace agreements. Ambassadors are likely to focus on ceasefire monitoring, rising tensions between the DRC and Rwanda, and the country’s worst Ebola outbreak on record.  

Heavy fighting in Yemen is fuelling concerns of an uptick in cholera, measles and other preventable diseases, as overcrowding at displacement sites threatens to overwhelm the limited healthcare services still open.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), health workers fighting the country’s largest-ever Ebola outbreak are struggling to overcome critical challenges to patient care, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Tuesday.

After six days of speeches from the UN General Assembly podium, one word rose above all others: peace.  This final edition of The Takeaway distils the messages he said reverberated through the Assembly Hall and looks at where the 193-member body goes from here. 

South Sudan remains committed to holding general elections in December to conclude its transition period, the country’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Cecilia Adout Majok Adeng, told the General Assembly on Monday, calling for all sanctions, including the arms embargo to be lifted.