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.
Call a friend with a connection, get a passport in 24 hours, and hand over some cash. That is what it takes to flee the fragile Sahel region of Africa, where smuggling networks exploit the desperation of people, leading in some cases to such deadly disasters as the recent shipwreck off the coast of Greece.
Just before noon in Satara, a remote village in Niger’s southwestern Tillaberi region, the thermometer is already hovering near 40°C.
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.
One of the world’s most celebrated poets is also one of the closest to the heart of the UN. Kahlil Gibran wrote The Prophet a century ago, and this milestone was marked at a special exhibit at the UN, which is also celebrating 75 years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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.
