Australia has become the 30th country to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem, with the World Health Organization confirming that the infectious eye disease, once a major cause of preventable blindness in remote Indigenous communities, no longer poses a national public health threat.

The WHO validation marks the first time Australia has been officially recognized for eliminating a neglected tropical disease, placing it among 63 countries globally and the 16th in the Western Pacific region to have eliminated at least one such disease.

Trachoma is caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis and remains the world’s leading infectious cause of blindness. It spreads through close contact with infected individuals, contaminated surfaces, and flies carrying eye and nasal discharge. Repeated infections can scar the eyelids, causing eyelashes to turn inward and scratch the eye surface, eventually leading to irreversible blindness if left untreated.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Australia’s achievement represented a major milestone both for Indigenous health outcomes and for global neglected tropical disease control efforts.“WHO congratulates Australia on this important achievement,” Tedros said in a WHO statement.

“This success reflects sustained commitment, strong partnerships, and a focus on reaching populations most affected by health inequities. It brings us closer to a world free from the suffering caused by trachoma.”Australia had eliminated trachoma from most of the country decades ago, but the disease persisted in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, particularly in areas facing overcrowded housing, poor sanitation, and limited access to clean water and health services.

National efforts intensified in 2006 with the launch of the National Trachoma Management Programme, which adopted the WHO-recommended SAFE strategy: surgery for trichiasis, antibiotics to treat infection, promotion of facial cleanliness, and environmental improvement.

The program included regular screening of all communities classified as at risk, carried out by qualified health workers, alongside treatment and prevention campaigns delivered through cooperation between federal and state governments, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations, and local communities.

Unlike many countries where mass drug administration formed the main strategy, Australia adapted its response using targeted treatment based on community-level data and stronger integration with housing, sanitation and environmental health programs.WHO said sustained investment in screening, treatment, housing improvements, water access, sanitation and hygiene contributed to a steady decline in disease prevalence over time.

Australia’s Minister for Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, said the validation was particularly significant for communities that had carried the burden of a preventable disease for generations.“Elimination of trachoma is a win for the eye health of communities across Australia, particularly those whose lives have been impacted by a disease that is entirely preventable,” Butler said.

He said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership had been central to the outcome, alongside long-term public investment and local health delivery.“The lessons from this work will inform how we approach other preventable health conditions in remote and regional Australia,” he said.

“Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations and local health workers have been central to this success, delivering culturally safe care and community-led solutions.”

Malarndirri McCarthy, Minister for Indigenous Australians, said the recognition reflected decades of work led by First Nations health services rather than a short-term intervention.“This recognition from the World Health Organization reflects decades of work led by Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations, alongside local health workers in remote First Nations communities,” McCarthy said.

“Their work has been critical to eliminating trachoma as a public health problem in Australia.”Trachoma is one of 21 diseases and disease groups classified by WHO as neglected tropical diseases, or NTDs. These diseases collectively affect more than one billion people worldwide, primarily among underserved populations with limited access to clean water, sanitation and essential health care.

WHO said Australia’s achievement demonstrated that elimination was possible even in geographically isolated and logistically difficult settings, provided political commitment and cross-sector coordination were sustained.

Saia Ma’u Piukala, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific, said countries across the region face similar challenges in reaching remote populations.“Tackling neglected tropical diseases in the Western Pacific Region has long been a challenge for countries across the socioeconomic spectrum,” Piukala said.

“But I also know that with strategic commitment underpinned by optimal resources and partnerships in health, success is possible.”He urged continued vigilance to ensure Australia maintains elimination status through strong surveillance and integration of monitoring systems into national healthcare structures.

WHO defines elimination of trachoma as a public health problem using three criteria: trachomatous trichiasis prevalence of less than 0.2% among adults aged 15 and above, trachomatous inflammation prevalence of less than 5% among children aged one to nine in formerly endemic districts, and a functioning system to identify and manage new trichiasis cases.

The global effort to eliminate trachoma dates back to 1996, when WHO launched the Alliance for the Global Elimination of Trachoma by 2020, known as GET2020. Although the original target year was missed, WHO’s current roadmap for neglected tropical diseases has extended the goal to 2030.

Australia now joins countries including India, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nepal and Viet Nam among those validated by WHO for eliminating trachoma as a public health problem.Despite the success, Australia still faces several other endemic neglected tropical diseases, including Buruli ulcer, leprosy and scabies.

WHO said continued surveillance would remain essential to ensure trachoma does not re-emerge, particularly in vulnerable remote communities where access to services remains uneven.

The organization added that maintaining gains would depend on keeping surveillance systems active, integrating eye health into broader national health planning, and ensuring that improvements in housing, sanitation and healthcare access continue beyond disease elimination targets.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said at least nine of those executed were linked to protests that shook Iran in January 2026, while 10 others were put to death for alleged membership in opposition groups and two were executed on spying charges.

The agency said many of those detained had been subjected to enforced disappearances, torture and what it described as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, including forced confessions, some of which were later broadcast publicly, as well as mock executions.

“I am appalled that on top of the already severe impacts of the conflict the rights of the Iranian people continue to be stripped from them by the authorities, in harsh and brutal ways,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement.

“In times of war, threats to human rights increase exponentially. Yet even where national security is invoked, human rights can only be limited where strictly necessary and proportionate,” he said.Turk called on Iranian authorities to halt further executions, establish a moratorium on the death penalty, ensure due process and fair trial guarantees, and immediately release those arbitrarily detained.

OHCHR said many people, including minors, remain at risk of capital punishment because of Iran’s broad interpretation of national security offenses. It said judicial proceedings were often accelerated and some death sentences, including those of at least nine executed protesters, were reportedly based on coerced confessions.

The agency also raised concerns over the transfer of dozens of prisoners, including prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, to undisclosed locations.Iran remains one of the world’s leading users of capital punishment and executes more people annually than any country except China, according to rights groups including Amnesty International.

Turk also criticized prison conditions across Iran, describing them as dire, with overcrowding and severe shortages of food, water, hygiene supplies, medicine and access to medical care.In Chabahar prison on March 18, detainees protesting the prolonged suspension of food distribution were reportedly met with lethal force.

OHCHR said security forces killed at least five prisoners and injured 21 others after confronting demonstrators inside the prison.The agency further said internet access in Iran had been almost completely shut down for 61 consecutive days, describing it as one of the longest nationwide shutdowns ever recorded.

“This is denying people across the country access to vital information, silencing independent voices, and inflicting enormous social and economic harm,” Turk said.He said the restrictions were worsening an already fragile humanitarian and economic situation and urged authorities to restore access immediately.

The warning is the first Child Alert issued by the United Nations children’s agency for Darfur in 20 years and is used only in the most severe emergencies to draw urgent international attention.“Children are at a breaking point across the region. Childhood is again defined by fear, by loss,” Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Port Sudan.“Children are bearing the heaviest weight of the war in Darfur.

Children are being killed and maimed, uprooted from their homes and pushed into extreme hunger, disease and trauma,” he said.Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan, has remained one of the epicenters of the conflict that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The fighting has included ethnically driven killings, widespread displacement and repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure, reviving memories of the earlier Darfur conflict that began in 2003 when rebels rose against Sudan’s government and state-backed Arab militias launched a brutal counterinsurgency campaign.

UNICEF said homes, schools and health facilities across the region have been burned, damaged or destroyed, leaving children without access to education, medical care or basic safety.The agency warned that despite the worsening crisis, international attention and funding remain far below what is needed.

Its humanitarian appeal for Sudan this year is only 16% funded.Across Sudan, at least 160 children were reportedly killed and 85 injured in the first three months of 2026, a significant increase compared with the same period last year, UNICEF said.

The most severe impact has been recorded in Al-Fashir, the long-besieged capital of North Darfur, where at least 1,300 children have been killed or maimed since April 2024.UNICEF also reported cases of sexual violence, child abductions and forced recruitment of minors by armed groups in the area.

Acute malnutrition has worsened sharply, with famine-level conditions confirmed in two additional areas of North Darfur in February, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

Aid agencies have repeatedly warned that restricted humanitarian access, continued shelling and the collapse of essential services are accelerating the risk of mass starvation, particularly among children and displaced families.

The conflict has displaced millions across Sudan and created one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies, with Darfur once again at the center of the crisis.

Aid officials said shortages of food, medicine and shelter were worsening rapidly, particularly in Darfur and Khartoum, where access for humanitarian workers remains severely restricted.

The UN called for urgent international funding and stronger diplomatic efforts to prevent further regional destabilization.

In a joint statement, the groups warned that persistent institutional paralysis, rising protectionism and unresolved disputes risk undermining the WTO’s core functions, including its ability to negotiate new rules and enforce existing ones.

They said urgent action was needed to restore credibility and ensure the organization remains responsive to modern trade realities.

Officials highlighted the continued dysfunction of the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism, particularly the paralysis of its appellate process, which has limited the body’s capacity to deliver binding resolutions in trade conflicts.

They called for a fully operational and accessible system to uphold rules-based trade.

The statement stressed the need to update WTO frameworks to address emerging areas such as digital commerce, industrial subsidies and supply chain resilience.

The EU and CPTPP members said current rules do not adequately reflect evolving global trade patterns or technological change.

The groups reaffirmed their commitment to a rules-based international trading system, warning that fragmentation into competing trade blocs could weaken global economic stability.

They urged broader membership engagement to advance consensus-driven reforms.

The WTO, established in 1995 to oversee global trade rules, has faced increasing pressure in recent years amid geopolitical tensions and shifting economic priorities among major economies.

The resolution, which calls for Syria’s new government to support inquiries into crimes committed during the conflict that started in 2011, passed without opposition at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday.

It indicates a shift in support by the 47 country members of the council toward Syria’s new government and its efforts to improve its rights record.

“Such international support serves as a strong incentive to continue the path of reform,” Syria’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Haydar Ali Ahmad, told the council.

Rebels led by the now president of the new transitional government, Ahmed al-Sharaa, seized the capital Damascus in December. Assad fled to Russia, following the 13 years of civil war that led to the disappearance of more than 100,000 people and the use of torture and chemical weapons by the regime.

Under pressure to show that it is turning a new page from the former regime, Syria’s new government welcomed the resolution on Friday.

“We are proud of Syria’s positive and constructive participation in drafting the resolution for the first time,” Syria Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani said in a statement posted on X.

Members of the council welcomed Syria’s engagement on Friday and urged it to uphold the resolution’s commitments, including the Commission of Inquiry into serious crimes since the start of the war.

British Ambassador to the U.N. Simon Manley said the killing of hundreds of Alwaite civilians – the minority sect from which toppled leader Bashir al-Assad hails – in March was a “chilling reminder of the deep wounds” from the conflict, and the need for justice and accountability.