The United Nations is to host its first ever summit on the biodiversity crisis on Wednesday, where world leaders are expected to commit to tackling unprecedented environmental degradation. At the largely online event, more than 100 heads of state and government are set to raise ambition for the development of a biodiversity framework, dpa reports.

The UN’s first virtual meeting of world leaders was set to start Tuesday with pre-recorded speeches from some of the planet’s biggest powers, kept at home by the coronavirus pandemic that will likely be a dominant theme at their video gathering this year.

The United Nations agreed on Friday to step up monitoring of reported rights abuses during Belarus’s crackdown on protests, angering Minsk and its ally Moscow and raising the diplomatic stakes in the crisis.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is set to announce on Wednesday the first proposed US emissions standards for commercial aircraft, officials briefed on the matter told Reuters.

The United Nations Security Council on Saturday approved aid deliveries to Syria through one border crossing from Turkey, a day after its authorisation for the six-year-long humanitarian operation ended, leaving millions of Syrian civilians in limbo.

The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a coronavirus resolution on Wednesday, after more than three months of deadlock over a response to the crisis, dpa reports. The text backs UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' 23 March call for a global ceasefire so that the world can concentrate on tackling the outbreak.

 A donor conference on Yemen was set to kick off on Tuesday as the United Nations aspires to shore up financial support for aid operations in the war-torn country. The video pledging event is co-hosted by Saudi Arabia, which is leading a military alliance fighting Iran-linked rebels in Yemen, and the United Nations.

The World Health Organiяation (WHO) appealed for more flight capacity on Tuesday to step up shipments of diagnostic tests and protective equipment to areas where COVID-19 is spreading, especially Latin America.

The UN human rights office voiced concern on Monday about more than a dozen countries that have declared states of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic where police have arrested or detained hundreds of thousands of people and killed others.

Countries must “double-down” on their efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus, the UN health agency said on Wednesday, after announcing that the global emergency can now be described as a pandemic. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the announcement as “a call to action – for everyone, everywhere,” if they are to stand a chance of stemming the disease spread.