Internally displaced children in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. Is there real hope for an end to the fighting? Yes, says the UN Development Programme ( UNDP), which released a report in November showing that, if the warring parties can agree to stop fighting, extreme poverty could be eradicated within a generation.

Spring saw a dramatic deterioration in the conflict, with fighting expanding on several fronts, and the UN confirmed that the country remained the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.Ī new UN envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, was appointed in September, with no illusions about the difficulty of bringing peace and stability to the country, as a UNICEF report showed that some 10,000 children had been killed or maimed since the beginning of the fighting. UN food relief agency chief David Beasley warned in March that millions were “ knocking on the door of famine”. The desperate people of Yemen faced the highest levels of acute malnutrition since the beginning of the conflict there in 2015, with over half the population facing severe food shortages. Pedersen acknowledged that the outcome was a disappointment but urged the members of the Constitutional Committee to continue their work.ĭevastation caused by protracted conflict in Yemen. Pedersen delivered his realistic assessment of the humanitarian and security situation in the country, characterised by what he called a “ gulf of mistrust” between warring parties, and frequent attacks on civilians.Īttempts to find agreement on a new constitution for Syria began in October, but these efforts proved fruitless, at least for now. The grim ten-year milestone of the Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 350,000 people, saw the UN Special Envoy for the country, Geir Pedersen, work tirelessly to advance the peace process, amid what he called the “ slow tsunami” of crises, with economic collapse compounded by COVID-19, corruption and mismanagement. Syria: peace denied by a ‘gulf of mistrust’

In Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria, more than 60,000 displaced people, most of them women and children, live in often dire conditions.

List of current armed conflicts