UN Catch-Up Dateline Geneva

In this week’s show, a wonderful coral reef discovery in the South Pacific, and the far from wonderful country-wide jobs crunch in Afghanistan, as the economy nosedives. In Africa, there’s been a “significant drop” in new cases of COVID, the UN health agency has said, but it’s no time for complacency.

And searing memories of the Holocaust from the last remaining survivors, as told to film producer Sophie Nahum; plus a famous poem by Mario Benedetti to put everything into context for us.

 

In this week’s show, the latest on the emergency relief effort in the Philippines after the terrible destruction caused by Super Typhoon Rai; deep concern about the blockade of medicines to Ethiopia’s Tigray from the World Health Organization (WHO), a “landmark” judgment against a Syrian interrogator who’s been found guilty of crimes against humanity, and Omicron on the African continent, where infections look to be plateauing, but not everywhere.

In our first show of 2022, the fight goes on for oil-rich Marib in northern Yemen, where the UN’s migration agency IOM is doing its utmost to help all those who’ve been repeatedly displaced by the conflict.

Journalists are under fire, too, UNESCO tells us, while on the COVID front line, the World Health Organization (WHO) has just announced that – for the moment at least – there’s no particular risk associated with holding next month’s Winter Games in Beijing.

And after days of nationwide protest in Kazakhstan, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet has appealed for calm.