Mami Mizutori, the UN Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR),  says proper allocation of disaster funds means “a hazard doesn’t necessarily have to become a disaster.” 

She spoke to UN News’s Natalie Hutchison, to mark World Tsunami Awareness Day, explaining how her Office is helping implement disaster risk management efforts around the world. 

Deployed with the UN Stabilization Mission (MONUSCO) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, since March 2017, after serving in Darfur and Mali, UN Police Officer (UNPOL) Seynabou Diouf from Senegal, helps empower women and survivors of sexual violence across the region. On Tuesday, she received the 2019 United Nations Female Police Officer of the Year Award at UN Headquarters in New York. Speaking before the ceremony, Major Diouf told UN News’s Pascal Sim, that it’s essential to have more women serving UN Peacekeeping, and that “what a man can do, a woman can do better”.

The unbearable levels of air pollution in India’s New Delhi, declared a public health emergency by the local government as of Monday, have made “the invisible killer, visible”. 

That’s from Valentin Foltescu, Senior Programme Management Officer for the UN Environment Programme in India, UNEP, who said that current levels of toxic particles in the capital are 40 times higher than the upper limit of exposure, recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). 

La Guajira, Colombia’s northernmost region, is dry with desert landscapes. It’s prone to drought and food insecurity particularly in rural areas. In recent years, the economic crisis in neighboring Venezuela has pushed over a million migrants across the border, including 165,000 people into La Guajira. The influx  has put a strain on host communities, where food is limited and natural resources scarce, so the UN Food and Agriculture Organization decided to take action.

From FAO, Anais Hotin and Charlotta Lomas have this special report.