The Lid is On

World leaders will soon be flying into New York, for High-Level Week at the UN General Assembly.

On Friday, the Peace Bell at UN Headquarters was rung by the UN Secretary-General and President of the General Assembly, and hundreds of young students filled the Economic and Social Council chamber, to reflect on this year’s theme for International Day of Peace, End Racism, Build Peace.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on education are severe and will only be fully understood in the years to come, says Costa Rica’s former education minister, Leonardo Garnier.

Next Wednesday the UN marks the third International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies. However, the skies are far from clear of air pollution. Only a month ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that practically all the air we breathe is polluted, and that it’s killing around seven million people every year.

On this week’s Lid Is On, Conor Lennon speaks to two experts on racism against people of African Descent, on the insidious nature of everyday racism, the importance of reparations, and why an acceptance that the wealth of developed countries is built on the back of oppressed, Black people, is liberating for people of all races.

Uganda’s status as a refuge has seen large numbers escaping conflict in neighbouring and nearby countries, in particular South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and living in relative safety.

Whilst many are living in refugee camps administered by the UN in the north of the country, such as the Bidi Bidi settlement, others have made their way to the capital, Kampala, and some are making an impact on Uganda’s alternative music scene.

Okubani Market is located in northern Uganda’s Yumbe District, within the Bidibidi refugee settlement which, during the South Sudan civil war, was the largest settlement of its kind in the world.

The market is a vital economic hub for refugees from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the host community, which suffered years of insecurity at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Hundreds of millions of people do not have access to electricity, seriously hampering their ability to improve their development prospects.

In Arua, northern Uganda, where employment rates are low and poverty is high, the UN is supporting a company that is providing pay-as-you-go solar energy services, putting the benefits of electricity in reach of villagers who would otherwise never be able to afford it.

In Lumonga village, situated in a remote part of the West Nile region of northern Uganda, smallholder farmers have traditionally been cut off from the banking system, and been forced to rely on small savings and loans from their community to survive hard times.

Northern Uganda has higher poverty and less employment that the south of the country, which is why the UN is backing projects aimed at boosting the regional economy.

In “Developing northern Uganda”, a special four-part mini-series, we go to Yumbe and Arua districts, to see how the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is helping to create sustainable employment prospects for local people.