UN chief António Guterres and Bangladesh's chief adviser Muhammad Yunus stand together before they broke fast with Rohingya refugees at the Ukhiya camp in Cox's Bazar, in Bangladesh, 15 March, 2025. (Keystone/AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

🫥Missing from a UN meeting on helping refugees? The refugees. A high-level meeting is scheduled for later today in New York aimed at devising a plan for about one million Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh to be able to return safely to Myanmar, with rights groups warning that safety assurances are nonexistent and none of the refugees are on the guest list.

🏠︎Myanmar army razed Rohingya villages to build security outposts, UN-backed report says. An investigation mandated by the Human Rights Council published on Monday details how "the authorities systematically destroyed Rohingya villages, mosques, cemeteries and farmland" after the 2017 expulsion, and the private and public entities that have benefited from the dispossession.

📝UN adds 68 companies to blacklist for alleged complicity in rights violations in Israeli settlements. The list now counts 158 firms, mainly from Israel, with others from the US, Canada, China and several European countries. New additions include Heidelberg Materials, rail provider Steconfer, and engineering firm Ineco. Expedia Group, Booking Holdings, and Airbnb were also relisted.

🔮The many questions that remain after UNGA80. Trump's mix of inflammatory remarks about the UN system and the lack of vision of what he would like to see didn't help diplomats and UN officials get a clearer picture of what the future holds for the world body.

🫁US refuses to back UN declaration on noncommunicable diseases. The political declaration, which includes new targets for the fight against heart disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory illnesses, will be submitted to a vote by the General Assembly, after US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. blocked consensus, accusing the text of promoting "destructive gender ideology".

✌Opinion: Where are the peacemakers? We act as if war were inevitable and peace were nothing more than a pipe dream. We must believe in it, argues Corinne Momal-Vanian, executive director of the Fondation Kofi Annan.