Bringing you the latest from UN press briefings in Geneva.

Displaced Palestinian students attend class at a tent school in the Tal Al Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, 9 December 2025. (Keystone/EPA/Mohammed Saber)

📚BACK TO SCHOOL. As the fighting eases and aid access improves, the UN is starting to help restore essential parts of ordinary life in Gaza, brought to a grinding halt by two years of war.

Unicef is scaling up its schooling programme with local education authorities, aiming to reach 336,000 children by 2027. There are around 700,000 school-aged children in Gaza. About half were previously enrolled in schools run by UNRWA, which is working to bring pupils back to studying in person or through online courses. For the rest, it's largely up to Unicef.

🎯Why it matters. “It’s about protecting the engine of Gaza’s future,” spokesperson James Elder told reporters on Tuesday, adding that “before this war, Palestinians in Gaza had some of the highest literacy rates in the world”.

💰Money factor. Elder said the agency was seeking $86 million – describing it as a small sum and roughly “what the world spends on coffee in an hour or two”.

Since the ceasefire took hold this month, children in the Strip have slowly begun returning to school (BBC). But challenges remain vast.

Roughly 97 per cent of Gaza’s schools have been wrecked or damaged, according to UN-cited figures. Most learning spaces are currently set up in tents.

Glimmer of hope. After being blocked for two years by Israel, school and recreational kits have finally been allowed in, according to Elder, including supplies such as pencils, erasers, exercise books, sports nets and balls.

🏙️Barely on the slides. Yet, despite the access improvements and a partial easing of bombardment (The Guardian) – over 110 children have been killed since the ceasefire began on 10 October and 20,000 since the war began –, life for Palestinians, including education, barely features in the Trump administration’s plans for the enclave or its slick PowerPoint renderings of a “New Gaza” of glass towers and beach resorts, Elder acknowledged.

The plan mentions 200 education centres (BBC) – still a fraction of the roughly 700-800 schools the enclave had before the war.

The United Arab Emirates’ blueprint for the “first planned community” in the outskirts of Rafah also contains plans for schools and healthcare, though it has been criticised for its biometrics-driven surveillance scheme (The Guardian).

WHO headquarters in Geneva. (Keystone/Salvatore Di Nolfi)

🇺🇸A flag recaptured: US exit from WHO highlights anger over Covid-19 pandemic. In a joint statement, secretary of state Marco Rubio and secretary of health and human services Robert F Kennedy Jr accused the organisation of keeping the American flag that hung outside its Geneva headquarters captive, while the WHO reportedly argued the withdrawal was not approved.

🇪🇺Swiss UN rapporteur flags EU double standards on minority protection. The EU “lacks both the tools and the political will to respond effectively to the challenges facing minorities within the bloc”, said Nicolas Levrat, speaking after a ten‑day visit to several European countries.

🌡️The United States officially leaves the Paris climate agreement. For the second time. Its exit comes a year after President Donald Trump signed an executive order, making it the only country to pull out of the global agreement struck among nations to fight climate change.

🪖Russian and Ukrainian military casualties in war nearing 2m, study finds. Neither side has publicly disclosed comprehensive casualty figures but the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) puts Russia casualties at close to 1.2 million, including as many as 325,000 deaths, and estimates around 600,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed.