The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, is preparing to leave southern Lebanon. In August 2025 the Security Council voted unanimously not to renew its mandate beyond the end of 2026, and withdrawal preparations are expected to begin in January 2027. The Council is still weighing what should follow, and nothing has been decided. UNIFIL has patrolled the Blue Line, the line that separates Lebanon and Israel, for 48 years. Mission spokesperson Kandice Ardiel, speaking from Naqoura, said returning residents face damaged electricity, water and road infrastructure in many villages. UN figures show the number of returning internally displaced people rose 13 per cent from September to nearly one million, while about 304,500 people remain displaced. Ardiel said impartial monitoring and international engagement will stay essential for Lebanon's stability.
Years on the Blue Line:48Still displaced:About 304,500
Why it matters for exams: UNIFIL is the UN Interim Force in Lebanon; its mandate was not renewed beyond the end of 2026 and it patrols the Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel.
UNESCO has announced that it will launch the 2026 Global Report on Early Childhood Care and Education at its headquarters in Paris on 20 November 2026. The report is published jointly with UNICEF and the OECD, and is subtitled Financing for Equitable and Inclusive Access to Quality Early Childhood Care and Education. The launch date is World Children's Day. UNESCO says the report carries the latest available data on the financing gap for early childhood care and education, which continues to widen, and the latest enrolment rates at global and regional levels. It says access to early education is stagnating. The report identifies critical investment gaps and sets out policy recommendations for governments on mobilising, allocating and using resources more equitably. Plenary sessions will be broadcast live on the UNESCO website.
Launch:20 November 2026, UNESCO Headquarters, ParisPublishers:UNESCO with UNICEF and OECD
Why it matters for exams: The Global Report on Early Childhood Care and Education is published by UNESCO with UNICEF and the OECD, and World Children's Day falls on 20 November.
Tom Fletcher, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, has asked governments to stop delaying support for the winter relief plan for Gaza. He said freezing temperatures and storms collapse or flood the tents in which many people live. Fletcher said the United Nations had set out clearly which supplies should reach Gaza, and that delays have cost lives. The list includes durable shelter, warm clothing, blankets and bedding, safe heating, generators, fuel, engine oil and spare parts, water-pumping equipment, debris removal and clearance of explosive ordnance. He called for all crossings to be opened, for non-governmental partners to be allowed to work, for commercial markets to function and for the plan to be funded. The Emergency Relief Coordinator heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA.
Why it matters for exams: Tom Fletcher is the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, the office that heads OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Singapore has opened its national currency vault to gold owned by other states. The Monetary Authority of Singapore, the city state's central bank, announced the central bank gold vaulting service along with the Ministry of Finance. Foreign central banks, international financial institutions and sovereign entities may now keep part of their gold reserves in Singapore. The vault can hold up to 500 tonnes of gold and has room to grow. Selected bullion banks based in Singapore will also get gold custody accounts so that they can serve those institutions. Alongside it, the Goods and Services Tax waiver is being widened to cover wholesale services on investment precious metal, such as vaulting, refining, assaying and broking, from April 2027. A gold clearing system is being readied, with live trading expected in the first quarter of 2027.
Vault capacity:Up to 500 tonnes of goldTax waiver effective:April 2027Gold clearing system trading:First quarter of 2027
Why it matters for exams: The durable fact is the Monetary Authority of Singapore's new central bank gold vaulting service and its national currency vault that can hold up to 500 tonnes of gold.
Kenya has sent home the last person being treated for Ebola and has begun the 42-day wait that must pass before a country can be declared free of the disease. Health Minister Aden Duale announced this at a news conference in Nairobi. If no fresh case appears, the declaration will come on 23 December, and prevention measures stay in force until then. The outbreak began with a case confirmed on 6 October in a man who had travelled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Uganda. He passed the virus to four family members and four health workers. Of the nine confirmed cases, seven people recovered and two died, and the last case was recorded on 19 October. The health ministry says all 135 contacts of the first patient were traced and monitored, and that every case stayed inside one transmission cluster with no community spread. The strain involved is Bundibugyo, and contacts of the final patient are completing 21 days of quarantine.
Countdown length:42 daysConfirmed cases in Kenya:9, of whom 7 recovered and 2 diedContacts traced:135Virus strain:Bundibugyo
Why it matters for exams: The durable fact is the 42-day countdown a country must clear before being declared Ebola-free, which Kenya has now entered after nine confirmed Bundibugyo cases.
Madagascar is running a climate risk analysis over all 23 of its regions to see what cyclones, floods, heat and drought do to its schools. The work belongs to the Climate-Smart Education Systems Initiative. Money for it comes from the Global Partnership for Education, while UNESCO carries it out along with its International Institute for Educational Planning and Save the Children. The Ministry of National Education has made the analysis a priority, and what it finds will go into the country's National Strategy for Education in Emergencies and Climate Change Adaptation. Four regional workshops were held between February and October 2026. Madagascar is the world's fourth-largest island, and in rare years its cyclone season brings as many as five weather systems, while a drought in some areas can run for a year. One school director said a week lost to flooding takes about a month to make up, and some schools add extra hours or Saturday classes. The recommendations ask for sturdier school buildings, teacher training in crisis management, and better early warning and communication.
Regions covered:All 23Regional workshops:Four, February to October 2026
Why it matters for exams: The Climate-Smart Education Systems Initiative is funded by the Global Partnership for Education and implemented by UNESCO, IIEP and Save the Children; Madagascar has 23 regions and is the world's fourth-largest island.
A new stocktaking of the world's warning systems has come from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, prepared with the World Meteorological Organization and titled Global Status of Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems 2026. It puts at 136 the number of countries that say they run such a system, which works out to 70 per cent and is a gain of 17 since March 2025. Protection shows up in the numbers: deaths in disasters are 6.1 times lower, and 3.2 times fewer people affected, where the systems are strong rather than patchy. About a third of all countries, even so, have nothing of the kind. The gap sits mainly with the least developed countries, with small island developing States, and with places living through conflict. Kamal Kishore, who heads UNDRR, called the advance significant while noting how many people are still unprotected. Celeste Saulo, the WMO Secretary-General, cautioned that the El Nino now under way may run past what existing monitoring charts cover.
Countries with systems:136, or 70 per centMortality gap:6.1 times lower
Why it matters for exams: The Global Status of Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems 2026 is published by UNDRR with WMO; 136 countries, or 70 per cent, report such systems.
Behind the UNIFIL withdrawal in the news this week: the force was created by the Security Council on 19 March 1978, and the first peacekeepers arrived on 23 March 1978. The Council set three objectives for it. The first was to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon. The second was to restore international peace and security. The third was to help the Government of Lebanon re-establish its authority in the region. The mission has since patrolled the Blue Line, the line used to mark the Israeli withdrawal, and reports violations along it. Its headquarters is at Naqoura in southern Lebanon. Many of its staff are Lebanese nationals recruited locally.
Created:19 March 1978Headquarters:Naqoura, southern Lebanon
Why it matters for exams: UNIFIL was created by the Security Council on 19 March 1978 with three objectives, and its headquarters is at Naqoura.
The Nobel Foundation is a private institution established in 1900. It carries the ultimate responsibility for fulfilling the intentions in the will of Alfred Nobel. Its main mission is to manage the fortune of Alfred Nobel so that the Nobel Prize keeps a secure financial standing over the long term, and so that the institutions which award the prizes stay independent when they choose the recipients. The Foundation also administers and develops the brands and intangible assets built up over the history of the Nobel Prize, and it works to safeguard the common interests of the prize-awarding institutions and to represent the Nobel organisation as a whole. Alfred Nobel himself designated the institutions responsible for choosing laureates for each prize. The Foundation has a Board of directors and is bound by its own statutes.
Established:1900Nature:private institution
Why it matters for exams: The Nobel Foundation is the body behind the prize, and the fact that it administers the money while separate institutions choose the laureates is a point candidates regularly get wrong.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is a public-private partnership. It helps to vaccinate more than half the children of the world against some of the deadliest diseases. Governments sit in it on both sides, the implementing countries and the donors alike, and beside them the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the World Bank, the vaccine industry, technical agencies, civil society and the Gates Foundation. It reports that work since 2000 has reached over 1.3 billion children with immunisation, and that child mortality has been halved across 78 lower-income countries. It shares the cost that implementing countries pay for vaccines, and it funds global stockpiles for Ebola, cholera, meningococcal, mpox and yellow fever vaccines. By 2025 the number of countries that had moved off its support stood at 19, and each of them now pays in full, from its own budget, for the vaccine programmes it began with the Alliance behind it. Its reform programme is called the Gavi Leap.
Inception:2000Lower-income countries:78Countries that transitioned out:19
Why it matters for exams: Gavi is the body behind vaccine supply to poorer countries, and its public-private character and its partner agencies are the facts a health question turns on.
Early Warnings for All, the United Nations drive to bring every person on Earth within reach of an early warning system, lies behind the warning figures in the news this week. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has fixed the end of 2027 as the deadline, saying nobody should die because a warning arrived late or never arrived at all. Close to 2 billion dollars has been raised since 2022 and about 160 countries are getting support. Anticipatory action, where money and supplies move out before a disaster lands instead of after it, was triggered 146 times across 54 countries in 2025 and reached 9.6 million people. Guterres has set out what must come first in the years left. Early warning has to become a standing public service rather than a passing project. The gaps in money and in capacity have to be closed. And scattered projects have to give way to long-term backing for plans that countries lead themselves.
Target:End of 2027Anticipatory action in 2025:146 activations in 54 countries, 9.6 million people
Why it matters for exams: Early Warnings for All is the UN initiative with a target of protecting every person by the end of 2027.