Alexander Lobov, a military engineer and mine action expert with the UN Development Programme (UNDP), has worked in hotspots from Afghanistan to Somalia, but never imagined using this experience in his native country, Ukraine, now one of the world’s most heavily mined places since Russia’s full-scale invasion of February 2022.
A police trainer in Thailand has told UN News about her “inspiration, passion, and strength” for teaching police cadets how to tackle the illicit trafficking of drugs and other contraband through her country and onwards through Southeast Asia.
A cross-border collaboration between law enforcement agencies in countries in Southeast Asia supported by the UN in Thailand is helping to tackle organized crime along one of the world’s “biggest drug trafficking corridors”.
From institutionalized racism to genocide, the roots are the same, according to people on the frontlines of change who shared their stories with UN News ahead of the International Day for Countering Hate Speech, observed on Sunday.
Local volunteers based in communities located on transnational trafficking routes in Southeast Asia are playing an increasingly important role in preventing the trade in illicit drugs, people and other items thanks to the support of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
An activist who wants to highlight the challenges and opportunities for people living with Down syndrome has told UN News how he wants the voices of people with disabilities to be heard “louder and louder” around the world.
Fleeing armed conflict is frightening, forcing people to escape violent clashes and leave behind their homes, schools, and daily lives in a desperate search for safety.
Shoppers in Mali’s Gao, Timbuktu, and Ménaka regions can snap up AK-pattern assault rifles for $750 and cartridges for 70 cents apiece, from locally handcrafted pistols to smuggled French and Turkish machine guns, as a dizzying array of illegal weaponry dots market stalls across the Sahel, a 6,000-kilometre-wide belt in the middle of Africa.
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the annual World Oceans Day Photo Competition, a new exhibit is making a splash now through 14 July at UN Headquarters to promote a better understanding of Earth’s invaluable bodies of water.
For Valdecir Nascimento, 63, the Black movement in Brazil was a “turning point” for her as a young woman, leading her from the revolutionary stilt houses in Alagados, to joining more than 1,000 participants last week at UN Headquarters for the second session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.
