The UN Financial and Social Fee for Western Asia (ESCWA) on Wednesday reported that regional progress is projected to select up from 2.9 per cent final 12 months to three.7 per cent in 2026.
That compares effectively with world averages and pre-pandemic progress of round 3.2 per cent.
Reducing inflation
The UN physique famous that this constructive outlook for Arab nations must also coincide with falling inflation, which is predicted to succeed in 5.4 per cent subsequent 12 months.
Contributing elements embrace elevated funding in sectors exterior the oil trade similar to renewable energy vegetation.
On the identical time, ESCWA mentioned that the Arab area stays “extremely uncovered” to exterior elements – particularly given continued uncertainty about world tariffs and disruption to regional commerce.
Knowledge signifies manufacturing of 1.3 million barrels of oil per day this 12 months throughout the area – the place manufacturing is an financial mainstay – which is barely above present world demand, which means that costs on the petrol pump might fall.
India: Unbiased rights specialists urge inquiry into alleged custodial deaths, police violence
Two UN Human Rights Council-appointed impartial specialists have known as on India to order pressing, impartial investigations into stories of a whole bunch of alleged extrajudicial killings, torture-related deaths and 1000’s of accidents linked to legislation enforcement operations.
The Particular Rapporteurs – who usually are not UN workers and don’t obtain any wage for his or her work – mentioned they’d obtained credible info pointing to a sample of extreme and infrequently deadly power, significantly in Uttar Pradesh and Assam.
The impartial rights specialists are calling for the pressing modernisation of India’s police power.
Not sporadic – systemic
“These allegations paint an image of legislation enforcement violence that’s not sporadic, however systemic,” the specialists mentioned.
“There seems to be a systemic failure of policing to fulfill primary human rights requirements.”
They expressed concern that minorities similar to Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis (or Indigenous Peoples) had been being disproportionately affected and warned that “silencing those that search justice is incompatible with an open and democratic society”.
The specialists urged reforms to deliver policing into line with worldwide requirements and mentioned they’d written to the authorities, providing technical assist whereas persevering with to observe developments.
Ukraine-Russia struggle now driving college closures even removed from frontlines
To Ukraine, the place faculties have been compelled to shut removed from the frontline as a direct results of the continued full-scale Russian invasion, the UN Youngsters’s Fund, UNICEF, warned on Wednesday.
Knowledge signifies that each two months final 12 months, air raid alerts alone induced college students to lose round 10 days of studying, whereas to date in 2026, greater than 16 days have been misplaced to energy cuts and a scarcity of heating.
UNICEF says that throughout frontline areas in Ukraine, a minimum of 1,700 faculties endure energy outages and heating disruption.
Sustained blackouts
Multiple in three faculties in Dnipropetrovsk and one in 5 in Kharkiv additionally face sustained blackouts that “immediately threaten protected, steady studying”.
In keeping with the company, nearly two million kids have been impacted by disruption immediately brought on by intensified Russian assaults on power infrastructure.
This contains in Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa, the place college students misplaced as much as 88 per cent of studying time since mid-January, primarily due to energy and heating outages.
UNICEF condemns new stories of youngsters killed by airstrikes in Myanmar
UN kids’s company UNICEF on Wednesday voiced deep alarm over new stories that a minimum of 5 Burmese kids have been killed and three others injured following current airstrikes.
The lethal strikes hit Ponnagyun Township, Rakhine State and Myinmu Township within the Sagaing area, between 23 and 24 February.
“Youngsters and civilians are as soon as once more bearing the brunt of escalating hostilities, with the strikes in Rakhine State reported to have hit properties and a busy native market in a village internet hosting displaced households,” the company mentioned in an announcement.
Defend kids
Ongoing clashes proceed to displace kids and upend their entry to very important providers, together with healthcare, training and safety, the company underscored.
“UNICEF is responding to the wants of conflict-affected kids and their households throughout Myanmar,” whereas calling on all combatants within the bloody battle which has engulfed the nation because the navy coup of 2021, to “uphold their obligations beneath worldwide humanitarian legislation. Youngsters should be protected always.”
