Features

“You know you are saying something right,” Stevie Wonder told reporters at UN Headquarters on his birthday in 1985. “I really don’t mind being banned. The sad thing is, I’d like to see South Africa, and I’d like to unite with my brothers and sisters in South Africa, but as long as this condition exists in the world, we cannot continue to support it as a country, as a people. We did away with it here. We can damn sure do away with it there.” 

Displacement after displacement. That describes the reality facing thousands of Palestinian families in Gaza who took Rashid Street from Rafah to the centre of the Gaza Strip after receiving evacuation orders from Israeli authorities on Monday to move to Al Mawasi, a coastal area of the besieged enclave.

Trinidad and Tobago is described as one of the “frontline States”, those nations that are most severely affected by the impact of the climate emergency, and youth activists are among the most prominent voices in the country calling for stronger action to combat the crisis, both at home and abroad.

A small but growing number of countries are well on their way to producing all of their electricity from renewable sources. Dominica, in the eastern Caribbean, is planning to join these pioneers and become the first small island developing State (SIDS) to stop using fossil fuels for energy generation.

Plastic pollution blocks rivers, chokes oceans and makes its way into the food chain as microplastics. It’s a global environmental crisis, and small island developing States are especially vulnerable, having to cope with detritus washing up on their beaches, as well as the waste they generate themselves. 

Rape. Murder. Hunger. Corpses filling streets, making it impossible to walk. Sudan was plunged into an ongoing, devastating war one year ago on 15 April, leaving in its wake almost 15,000 dead, eight million civilians on the run, 25 million in dire need of assistance and warnings from humanitarians about famine, aid blockades and a growing list of atrocities on all sides.

When the Genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda began in April 1994 Eric Eugene Murangwa was a footballer at one of the country’s top clubs. Although he is a Tutsi, he was protected by a member of the notorious Interahamwe, responsible for killing hundreds of thousands. Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the genocide, marked on 7 April, Mr. Murangwa shared his extraordinary story with UN News.

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali took on fights outside the ring for civil rights and against war, bringing strong messages to the UN since the 1970s, so ahead of the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, we looked back at what he brought to the world.

Some of Haiti’s gangs have bigger arsenals than the police as criminal groups are becoming “stronger, richer and more autonomous” by using arms trafficking to fuel their growth, according to UN experts.

The scale of the bombs dropped on Gaza since 7 October means that it will take millions of dollars, and many years, to decontaminate the Strip from unexploded munitions, the head of the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in Palestine tells UN News, ahead of Mine Action Day.