The northern highlands of Ethiopia became a global byword for famine in the mid-1980s, when drought and conflict combined to create a disaster that killed as many as one million people. Now hunger is stalking the Tigray region again, and a senior UN official alleges that starvation is being used as a weapon of war.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Friday of that violence in Myanmar is intensifying and condemned the army's "outrageous" use of heavy weapons, while urging a wider diplomatic effort to pressure the ruling generals.
An unpublished analysis by United Nations agencies and aid groups estimates some 350,000 people in Ethiopia's conflict-torn Tigray region are in famine conditions, according to an internal U.N. document seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
Myanmar's Kayah State could suffer a "massive" loss of life beyond anything seen since the military seized power, with more than 100,000 people fleeing their homes to escape conflict, a U.N. human rights investigator warned on Wednesday.
The Biden administration plans to donate 500 million Pfizer (PFE.N) coronavirus vaccine doses to nearly 100 countries over the next two years, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.