UN Interviews

In recent years, development efforts have been set back by long-standing obstacles made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing conflicts, climate change, rising debt, lack of digital access and growing inequalities.

Dima Al-Khatib, Director of the UN Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) says there’s an urgent need to accelerate progress towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals – only 17 per cent of which are on track.

"I saw people coming from different parts of the world just to help bring peace in my country,” said Chief Superintendent Zainab Gbla, speaking to UN News just ahead of receiving her award this week for UN Woman Police Officer of the Year.

She’s been serving in Abyei, a disputed oil-rich region straddling Sudan and South Sudan, since April 2023, as the Chief Police Training Officer for the interim security force there, UNISFA.

Squadron Leader Sharon Mwinsote Syme of Ghana is this year’s UN Military Gender Advocate award winner for her work boosting gender equality while serving with the UN peacekeeping mission in the disputed Abyei region (UNISFA) between neighbouring Sudan and South Sudan.  

She trained over 1,500 UNISFA personnel on gender-responsive peacekeeping in addition to working closely with local communities, including coordinating a highly effective health campaign to counter child marriage and female genital mutilation.  

Until this week, no commercial or humanitarian supplies had been allowed into Gaza since 2 March, deepening an already catastrophic hunger crisis and sparking widespread condemnation from the international community.

Supplies from only 115 out of 400 trucks have been cleared for collection and distribution in recent days, which UN humanitarians have been describing as a ‘drop in the ocean’ of need.

Speaking to UN News’s Ezzat El-Ferri, Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for aid coordination office OCHA said that “people are dying and are left without aid”.

Russia’s continuing full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues to devastate civilian lives and infrastructure, causing large-scale displacement and destruction.

With attacks in the eastern, southern and northeastern frontline regions intensifying, April saw the highest number of civilians killed in Ukraine since last September.

In a historic milestone for global public health, Member States of the World Health Organization on Tuesday adopted the Pandemic Agreement – an accord aimed at preventing future devastating outbreaks.

Negotiations began in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, and after just three and a half years – a relatively short timeline for crafting complex international treaties – the world today is more prepared than it was before the coronavirus struck.

With so many wars and emergencies happening at once, it can be easy for other fundamental issues to go unnoticed, such as the safety of journalists.

Nonetheless, it is a time of great danger for reporters who cover these important stories – like Christina Assi, a Lebanese photojournalist who was seriously injured in a double missile strike in the recent fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

Despite her injuries, Ms. Assi carried the Olympic torch in France ahead of the Olympic Games.

Autonomous weapon systems, which require no human input to select and apply force, are developing rapidly and pose a threat to existing humanitarian, ethical, human rights and security norms.

At the end of two days of informal consultations in New York this week – as negotiations continues towards a legal framework which will regulate and ban such systems – UN News’s Naima Sawaya spoke to Nicole van Rooijen, executive director of the civil society coalition, Stop Killer Robots. 

There are now more than 122 million people worldwide, forcibly displaced from their homes. While trauma, depression and anxiety are prevalent says the UN World Health Organization (WHO), many refugees and migrants struggle to access mental health services.

The digital revolution has created unprecedented opportunities for children and young people across the globe to communicate, learn, and socialise.

However, browsing the internet as artificial intelligence gathers pace, also presents dangers – from sexual abuse to cyberbullying – highlighting the need for smarter and more effective regulation to keep youngsters safe.