In this week’s 15-minute podcast, we enter the murky world of so-called intelligent drone strike technology and concerns about their proliferation in an interview with the UN Institute for Disarmament Research. Also, an alert over Africa’s third COVID wave, a new UN report likening drought to a new pandemic and a warning over the plight of millions of domestic workers, from the UN labour agency ILO. Also, we’ll have closing comments from regular guest, Solange Behoteguy Cortes.

In this week’s 15-minute UN Catch-Up podcast, we hear from the UN aid team that’s been caught up in the terrifying volcanic eruption in DR Congo’s Goma city. Plus, the week’s top news stories from UN News, covering Ethiopia’s Tigray, COVID in Africa and a global biodiversity regeneration call. With Daniel Johnson and Solange Behoteguy-Cortes. Thanks for listening.

In this week’s UN Catch-Up podcast, we hear about the pressures facing aid workers and people on the front line in Gaza, an appeal for help for almost 900,000 Rohingya refugees, an alert that Mozambicans fleeing violence to Tanzania have been forcibly returned, and guidance from the WHO on genetically modified mosquitoes to overcome deadly malaria. As ever, there’ll be insight from regular guest, Solange Behoteguy-Cortes.

In this week’s UN Catch-Up: a veteran aid worker’s take on the distressing scale of the humanitarian crisis in Southern Madagascar – it’s on the “periphery of famine”, he tells us, and not for the first time.

There’s an alert too from WHO on Africa where a “third wave “of coronavirus infections is feared, along with some good news – and some not so good - from South Sudan, where schools have reopened after lockdown, and positive news from the United States, which has decided to lift patent restrictions on COVID vaccines.