• COVID19 virus ‘blocker’ treatment gets WHO green light 
• Situation in Belarus has continued to worsen in 2021, says UN rights chief 
• Taliban can’t rule Afghanistan without us women, says mayor who fled Kabul 

Afghan political exile Zarifa Ghafari fled Kabul shortly after the Taliban takeover on 15 August; she’d already survived three attempts on her life as one of the country’s few female mayors – and she feared the worst if she stayed.

She spoke in Geneva to UN News’s Daniel Johnson, who started by asking her for her assessment of the country’s new de facto rulers.

In this week’s show, UN Secretary-General António Guterres talks about Afghanistan and other big problems that require international cooperation to fix them; details from UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet on Myanmar’s continuing spiral of violence, and corruption in South Sudan that’s impacting terribly on the country’s people – although there is a little bit of good news from there too, thanks to a UN mission UNMISS initiative, as we’ll hear.

• Myanmar crisis escalating towards civil war, warns UN rights chief  
• G20 need to scale up food aid to Afghanistan’s rural population 
• South Sudan plagued by violence and corruption, Human Rights Council hears 

What’s in the water?

That’s what legions of volunteers are finding out with MyH20, a network that collects drinking water data to help find solutions to improve water quality across China.

• Afghanistan’s health care system on brink of collapse: Tedros 
• US-China commitments on climate action welcomed 
• Children’s diets did not improve in last decade, ‘could get much worse’ 

• Guterres: ‘common responsibility’ to save planet for future generations 
• UN rights office seriously concerned over Haiti migrant returns from US 
• UNHCR welcomes US plan to increase refugee resettlement 

UN Secretary-General's address to the Opening of the General Debate of the 76th Session of the General Assembly, on Tuesday, 21 September 2021. Full remarks here. 

• Getting sustainability back on track, only way to save planet: Guterres
• Guterres condemns Yemen executions by Houthis  
• R&D investment rose in many areas during COVID: UN report 

For UN Secretary-General António Guterres, this is a pivotal moment for mankind, which is on the brink of global catastrophe, but has the tools to create a fair