The Lid is On

This is the first in a series of special episodes of The Lid Is On, recorded during High-Level week of the General Assembly, and featuring some of the many experts, UN officials and politicians who filled UN Headquarters during late September 2018.

Conor Lennon kicks off with a look at digital technology, and how it is being used to tackle some of the world's biggest problems, from climate change to disaster relief.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that about 800,000 people died in 2016 by their own hand, mostly in low- and middle-income countries.

As this week marks World Suicide Prevention Day, WHO is appealing to countries to develop suicide prevention strategies and a toolkit has been developed to help communities address the issue effectively.

In a report released in July, the UN Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate for the Security Council (CTED), warned of a growing threat: the return of foreign terrorist fighters, or FTFs.

Member States estimate that there could up to 30,000 ISIL fighters in Iraq and Syria. A significant proportion of them are foreigners, and the majority of the European nationals return home.

Throughout his term as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein has never been afraid to speak up for the vulnerable and condemn abuse.

 “Never give up”. Is the motto of Ben Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg post-war US Military Tribunals, and at 99 years of age, he is still a tireless, and fearless, fighter for human rights and justice.

After the war, Ferencz was drafted into the Trials at a time when the very concept of war crimes was barely understood. Just 27 at the time, he found himself prosecuting former SS officers responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women and children.

Young women are increasingly being groomed as reluctant suicide bombers in the impoverished Lake Chad region of central Africa.

The extremist group Boko Haram which originated in the north-eastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri is now causing terror in neighbouring countries including Chad.

In this special The Lid Is On podcast from UN News, Daniel Dickinson travelled to Chad to listen to the experience of one teenage girl who survived after being sent by Boko Haram to blow herself up at a busy weekly market.

A veteran de-miner who has witnessed some of the worst damage explosives can inflict on civilians, says he has never seen anything like the situation in Mosul, the last stronghold of the extremist group ISIL in Iraq, which was finally liberated just over a year ago.

Paul Heslop of the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) said that, although teams have cleared nearly 30,000 grenades, artillery shells, aircraft bombs, and other deadly devices, “we’re just starting to scratch the surface”.

It’s time for the United Nations to play a bigger role in disarmament, according to UN chief António Guterres, calling for concrete, practical actions to promote peaceful conflict resolution. Among those actions is to maximize the benefits of the technological revolution.

Known as “frontier technology”, the field of scientific and technological innovation could produce new tools to maintain peace and security around the world.

Daniel Johnson discusses the various ways that the UN is looking to incorporate such technology in its disarmament agenda.

The UN Special Envoy for Global Education is on a mission to convince wealthy donors that investing in good teachers and classrooms is an investment in our collective future.

For this edition of our UN News podcast, the Lid Is On, we invited former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to sit down with three young ambassadors from Kenya, Nepal and Guinea, for a lively conversation about the real difference that education dollars can make to peace, security, and sustainable growth across the world.