ADDIS ABABA— The call for a truce comes as the pan-African body African Union makes efforts to bring the warring sides to negotiating table. The African Union’s chief has called for an “immediate, unconditional ceasefire” in the two-year-old conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. An AU statement said Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat is “following with great concern reports of increased

UNICEF warns that an unprecedented number of children are likely to die in drought-stricken, famine prone Somalia without greater, immediate action from the international community to provide lifesaving assistance. Somalia has endured four consecutive years of failed rains and is facing a possible fifth season of drought. This has destroyed peoples’ ability to feed themselves and has forced millions to

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, says the escalating hostilities in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region are taking a devastating toll on the civilian population and must stop. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva. U.N. rights chief Volker Turk is alarmed at the latest surge of airstrikes launched on the Tigray region by the Ethiopian air force.

As the cold season starts in landlocked Afghanistan, concerns are mounting about widespread hunger, particularly in the rugged parts of the country where the first snowfall blocks the roads. This year there is hope that 30,000 metric tons of wheat coming from another war-torn country, Ukraine, will mitigate the hunger for some Afghans. The U.N. says hunger is nearly universal