It is time to help people live their dreams by ensuring that commitments made by governments are kept, according to the president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).
Saber Chowdhury is currently at UN Headquarters in New York for IPU’s Fourth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament.
Parliamentary leaders from around the world have been called on by the UN to help end global poverty and give hope to the disenfranchised.
Parliamentary officials from nearly 140 countries are participating in the Fourth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament at Headquarters in New York this week to look at ways to tackle global challenges to peace and democracy.
Warring parties in Taiz governorate in Yemen are being urged by the World Health Organization (WHO) to observe a ceasefire and demilitarize hospitals and health facilities to allow the safe delivery of humanitarian aid.
Taiz is Yemen's most populous governorate, but WHO reports that three main hospitals there are inaccessible or caught in frontline fighting.
This is only one crisis in a country where roughly 80 per cent of the population—or just over 21 million people—are in need of aid relief.
The detention of people, often without cause, is a repressive technique which violates fundamental human rights and is often used to spread terror within society.
That is the message connected to the UN’s International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, observed annually on 30 August.
According to the United Nations, a “forced disappearance” qualifies as a crime against humanity and gives victims' families the right to seek reparations.
State-of-the art evacuation centres in the Philippines are being set up by the UN to provide shelter for communities in cyclone-prone areas of the country.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have broken ground on the first of two such centres on the island of Samar.
Maria Carlino reports.
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The ill-effects of nuclear testing in Kazakhstan are still being seen according to authorities, even though the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test site closed over 20 years ago.
Educating people about these devastating health consequences is a goal of the International Day against Nuclear Testing, observed annually on 29 August.
Hurricane Katrina, which hit the American city of New Orleans 10 years ago this month, has raised the bar for disaster risk management, according to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).
The category 5 hurricane is considered the worst in the history of the United States.
It inundated 80 per cent of New Orleans, and claimed the lives of nearly 2000 people.
Stephanie Coutrix spoke with UNISDR Spokesperson Denis McClean.
Children in South Sudan, who were forced out of school due to poverty, gender discrimination or conflict, are getting a second chance at an education.
They're returning to the classroom thanks to the Back-to-Learning Initiative launched this year by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) .
The campaign targets 400,000 children who've had their education interrupted, or who never had the chance to go to school.
The European Union is one of its supporters.
Humanitarian relief efforts continue in Myanmar, where floods and landslides brought on by monsoon rains have caused the deaths of more than 100 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Renata Lok-Dessalien , UN Resident Coordinator, reports that the downpour of rain has also led to an “unprecedented amount of solidarity” on the part of concerned people in the country and from around the world.
Mary Ferreira caught up with her in Yangon to find out more.
Potato seeds once thought lost to the Andean people who introduced them to the world will now be safeguarded for future generations in a seed vault in the Arctic.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced on Thursday that a ceremony is taking place in Svalbard, Norway, for scientists and delegations to witness the deposit.
The operation is co-funded by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, whose mission is to conserve the planet's crop diversity.
