This is the news in brief from the United Nations. UN humanitarians on Friday said that they were urgently ramping up efforts to provide vulnerable children with specialist and psychosocial support, amid tremendous mental health needs, and other dangers linked to the Russian invasion. Aaron Greenberg, the UN Children's Fund, regional child protection adviser for Europe and Central Asia, said that the agency was anticipating numbers in terms of all forms of violence against children to be in the tens of thousands, before the 24th of February, Ukraine's orphanages boarding schools and other institutions for youngsters housed more than 91,000 children around half with disabilities. Today only around one third of that number have returned home, including those evacuated from the east and south, mister Greenberg said. If you start doing the math, there are children who remain in institutions who were not evacuated either internally or externally, and there are children in foster care families whose payments were temporarily interrupted. And there are children in guardianship arrangements, a significant number. So the number of children in need who are vulnerable pre crisis and who's now vulnerabilities have been accelerated is incredibly high. Throughout Ukraine, UNICEF has 56 deployed mobile units to provide specialized health services to traumatize children. There are also 12 dedicated violence mobile teams in the east where fighting is ongoing, and these units have worked with 7000 cases of specific violence involving women and children. Staying with Ukraine and its impact in Africa is likely to be significant and worrying. UN development experts have warned ahuna esia Conway, director of the UN development program's Africa bureau, told journalists in Geneva that the COVID-19 pandemic had already created immense discontent across the continent, tens of millions of people have been pushed into poverty by the impact of the coronavirus, and the result has been that democracy has been pushed back. Insisted, the virus has also complicated efforts to overcome insecurity and violence, the UNDP official continued in reference to the violent extremism and climate shocks that have destabilized vast areas of the Sahel region in recent years. We have never experienced greater pressure and challenge on our ability to sustain peace and development on a healthy planet as we experience today. A global pandemic that appended the world and changed it forever, we've seen resulting from that, but also in terms of preexisting conditions, rise in poverty and inequality. UNDP economist Raymond gilpin added that Africa's dependence on imports of food, fuel, medicines, and consumer goods made it particularly vulnerable to rising global inflation. This was likely to lead to tensions and there was a distinct possibility that these might spill over into violent protests, mister gilpin added. The average cost of basic foods decreased slightly last month after a large price hike in March, the UN food and agriculture organization FAO said on Friday. Modest falls in the price of vegetable oils and cereals drove the FAO food price index down .8% from the all time high reached in March, the UN agency explained. For other foodstuffs, including rice meat, dairy, and sugar, prices increased slightly and food costs today are still almost 30% higher than they were 12 months ago, which continues to pose a challenge to global food security for the most vulnerable. FAO cereal price index shared .7 points in April, nudged downwards by falling world maze prices, but wheat prices increased by .2%, and were strongly affected by the continued Russian blockade of ports in Ukraine and concerns over crop conditions in the United States, said FAO, which explained that these concerns were tempered by larger wheat exports from India and higher than expected shipments from Russia, which increased by .2%. Daniel Johnson, UN news..