This is the News in Brief from the United Nations. 

Prioritize diplomacy and peace in Ukraine: UN General Assembly President 

Amid rising tensions over the crisis in Ukraine, UN General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid appealed on Wednesday for all countries to prioritize diplomacy.  

Without naming any specific State, ahead of a debate at the New York assembly, Mr. Shahid urged Member States to give priority to diplomacy, good offices and mediation. 

“Let’s give peace all the chance it deserves,” he said, speaking hours after Secretary-General António Guterres had warned that “the entire international system” was being tested by the Ukraine crisis.

WHO establishes global biomanufacturing training hub in Republic of Korea 

A cutting-edge biomanufacturing hub has been created to help Asian countries produce their own vaccines using the latest mRNA technology to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines. 

The development, announced by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and the Republic of Korea, follows the successful establishment of a similar hub in South Africa. 

The new hub will serve all low and middle-income countries wishing to produce vaccines, insulin, monoclonal antibodies and cancer treatments. 

Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Serbia and Vietnam are to receive the lifesaving technological knowhow, WHO said. 

The UN agency explained that the Korean authorities have said that the hub can use a large biomanufacturing training facility outside Seoul. 

It will provide technical and hands-on training to meet operational and good manufacturing practice requirements. 

Baby formula marketing ‘pervasive, misleading and aggressive’ – UN report 

Parents and pregnant women worldwide are exposed to aggressive marketing for baby formula milk, two UN agencies have said in a new report. 

According to WHO and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the $55 billion formula milk industry uses systematic and unethical marketing strategies to influence parents. 

Formula milk producers also use exploitative practices that compromise child nutrition and violate international commitments, they maintained. 

In a call for stronger industry regulation to protect children’s health, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the new report showed that formula milk marketing “remains unacceptably pervasive, misleading and aggressive.”  

The report emphasized that the industry often delivers misleading and scientifically unsubstantiated information to parents and health workers. 

It also violates international rules on marketing breast-milk substitutes  to protect mothers from aggressive marketing by the baby food industry. 

According to WHO, breastfeeding is the best way of providing infants with the nutrients they need for healthy growth and development and can prevent 13 per cent of child deaths. 

Daniel Johnson, UN News.