UN Catch-Up Dateline Geneva

In this week’s show: a worrying state of emergency continues in Ethiopia where UN staff are being held – the Secretary-General wants them released immediately – a pharma deal that gives a lot more people a chance to get COVID-19 antivirals than ever before, and tough words for the tobacco industry, from the World Health Organization (WHO).

And in this week’s interview - with UN communications chief Melissa Fleming – why it’s crucially important that the Organization should do more to listen to what young activists are saying, for everyone’s sake.

In this week’s show: how drones are proving their worth in humanitarian emergencies, worrying data on diabetes and COVID-19, the latest from the Belarus-Poland border, and news from the COP26 climate summit. Stay with us to hear closing comments from the show’s regular guest, Solange Behoteguy-Cortes.

That’s all coming up, in this week’s UN Catch-Up Dateline Geneva. Thanks for listening.

Packed into this week’s 15-minute show: potential war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ethiopia’s Tigray; we hear from the UN rights office which has spoken to victims and their families; an urgent appeal for Afghanistan’s ‘broke and broken’, and, news from COP26 in Glasgow, where countries have been reminded they need to spend a lot more on climate emergency adaptation measures...Stay with us too, for poetic closing thoughts from the show’s regular guest, Solange Behoteguy-Cortes.  

That’s all coming up, in this week’s UN Catch-Up Dateline Geneva. Thanks for listening. 

In this week’s show, why cookery classes are proving a hit with visually-impaired children in Rome; we have the latest stories from the UN News team in New York, and as ever, there’ll be closing comments to savour from regular guest Solange Behoteguy-Cortes.  

That’s all coming up, in this week’s UN Catch-Up Dateline Geneva.  

In this week’s show, the “Jimi Hendrix of the Sahel”, also known to his fans as Vieux Farka Touré, sings his message of peace, in a region on the frontlines of climate change, mass displacement and violent extremism; we also hear the latest stories from the UN News team, covering Afghanistan, COVID-19 and a radical weather forecasting initiative from the World Meteorological Organization. With closing comments too, from regular guest Solange Behoteguy-Cortes. 

In this week’s show, just one in seven COVID cases is detected in Africa while deaths from another deadly disease – tuberculosis – rise for the first time in a decade, the World Health Organization tells us. An update too from Afghanistan, where the UN refugee agency is desperately worried about a lack of funds for lifesaving aid work – and plunging winter temperatures…We’ll also meet the team behind The Walk, an ambitious project to raise awareness about Syrian refugees, which involves walking a huge puppet across Europe.

In this week’s show, a UN-led push to get more COVID vaccines into lots more arms all over the world, Afghanistan reaches a new ‘depth of destitution’ and an alert in northern Mozambique over the indoctrination of children by insurgents. Plus, the latest on the situation inside Syria, from Paolo Pinheiro, chair of the UN-appointed International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which reports to the Human Rights Council. 

In this week’s show, the UN’s top humanitarian official says that famine is likely happening in Ethiopia’s Tigray, while food waste and poor diets continue to handicap millions of children worldwide, the Food and Agriculture Organization says.

We’ll also hear from an Afghan political activist who's speaking up for women's rights after the Taliban takeover, as well as bleak prospects for recovery in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from UN economists UNCTAD...and, a global initiative to tackle meningitis, with the help of the World Health Organization. 

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.

In this week’s show, an appeal for support for Afghanistan’s people from António Guterres, who also warns that we’re at a “tipping point” for climate action; we also hear from the fifth and final Commission of Inquiry report on Burundi – it’s still talking of crimes against humanity…. And an interview with UN-appointed independent human rights expert Dr Ardi Imseis, on Yemen’s unrelenting conflict and its impact on the country’s most vulnerable people.