UN Interviews

At a time when online hate speech and misinformation are on the rise, one of the missions of the UN education and culture agency UNESCO, has been to propose pathways for more effective social media platform governance.

It’s crucial for tech companies to gear policies towards a comprehensive system with one main goal – “the protection and promotion of all human rights for everyone”.

A UN-led mass vaccination campaign in underway in northeast Syria’s notorious Al Hol camp complex to protect the nearly 40,000 people being detained there from a cholera outbreak.

For years, Al Hol has housed Syrians, Iraqis and other third country nationals linked to – or impacted by – the country’s long civil war, which ended with the ousting of President Bashar al Assad in late November.

Among those being held are hundreds of family members of alleged terrorist fighters from ISIL and other groups.

The global gaming industry – now five times larger than Hollywood with a value of $196 billion – faces growing security challenges as violent extremist groups increasingly exploit gaming platforms to reach people across borders.

Earlier this month, experts from the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT), in partnership with the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), hosted an event to explore the intersection of gaming and violent extremism.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has not solved the country’s massive humanitarian emergency, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) insisted on Thursday, with some two million sheltering in the northwest unable to go back to villages and cities shattered by 14 years of war.

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, the agency’s regional chief of communications and advocacy in the Middle East, Ammar Ammar, has been describing the dramatic scenes he saw, while on mission this week to Damascus, Aleppo, Hama and Homs.

At a historic crossroads, less than two weeks after the collapse of the Assad regime, Syria is slowly “coming back from the brink” and its citizens must “find a way of moving forward together to build a future for the country”.

That’s according to veteran human rights expert and humanitarian, Hanny Megally of Egypt, who serves as a Commissioner with the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.

A new series of reported Israeli airstrikes and clashes in multiple sites across Gaza at the weekend killed dozens of civilians and left others facing life-changing injuries, UN humanitarians said on Monday.

In one attack in the southern city of Khan Younis, a school was hit, even though it is run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and was sheltering families uprooted by the conflict.

The UN Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) isn’t only enhancing the role of geospatial technology for use by agencies across the Organization – it’s also helping safeguard the world’s precious cultural heritage in the midst of conflict.

In a partnership with the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UNOSAT provides imagery of areas of concern to help protect historic sites and other heritage, by monitoring them and assessing damage following attacks.

There is now a “total breakdown” of society across the Gaza Strip amid a level of devastation this is “absolutely staggering.”

That’s according to Jonathan Dumont, Head of Emergency Communications for the World Food Programme (WFP) who has just been in the enclave and told UN News in an interview that a way “must be found” to get food in for desperate civilians, to head off the risk of widespread famine.