The number one priority for the UN’s Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in the year ahead is fighting the “nexus between terrorism and transnational organized crime.”
That’s according to the man leading the crime-fighting agency, Yuri Fedotov.
An “emergency response” to a rise in HIV infections in Libya, has been launched by the World Health Organization (WHO).
A lack of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs in the North African country, to treat the virus that leads to AIDS, resulted in the deaths of 10 adolescents last year.
The UN health agency says there were more than 6,300 registered HIV patients there in 2016.
Mustafa Al Gamal asked the WHO Spokesperson in Libya, Dr. Ahmed Salem, about the agency’s response.
Duration: 1’43”
The killing of two peacekeepers in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Tuesday has been condemned by the UN mission there.
The blue helmets, who were part of a battalion from Morocco, were escorting fuel trucks, when they were ambushed by unknown assailants.
Two other peacekeepers were injured, one seriously, according to Vladimir Monteiro, spokesperson for the UN Stabilization Mission, MINUSCA.
“Volunteering” is contagious in a positive way according to a representative from a Kenya based organisation, who attended a UN-supported conference on volunteering, recently held in Mexico.
According to the UN, more than one billion people globally offer their time and experience for free every year.
Volunteerism is seen as a powerful means of tackling development challenges across the world.
Pierre-Marc Rene has been speaking to Fredrick Sabia.
Duration: 3’34”
Former child soldiers should be treated as victims and not security threats in the year ahead, the UN special envoy for children and armed conflict has urged.
Many of them experience trauma and stigma that can make it difficult to go back to their communities or the classroom, says Leila Zerrougi.
In the past 20 years, her office has managed to secure the release of more than 115,000 children.
Some five and a half million people in Syria’s capital Damascus, have been deprived of water for the past seventeen days, according to a representative of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the war-torn country.
Fighting in the Wadi Barada area where much of Damascus’s water supply originates has resulted in an acute water shortage, which has forced many families to seek supplies from private vendors.
Reem Abaza spoke to UNICEF’s Shushan Mebrahtu about the shortage.
Duration: 2’52”
The UN faces “very challenging times” and needs to embark on a new mission “to change and to reform and to improve.”
That’s the message delivered to staff by new UN chief, António Guterres, on his first day at UN Headquarters in New York.
The former Portuguese Prime Minister and UN High Commissioner for Refugees began his five-year term at the helm of the organization on January 1.
More details from Matthew Wells.
Duration: 2'26"
“Positive” developments can be expected across the world in 2017 despite the ongoing conflicts and humanitarian crises that typified 2016; that’s according to the President of the UN General Assembly, Peter Thomson.
The PGA, as he is known, presides over the General Assembly which is made up of the UN’s 193 Member States.
He’s been speaking to Daniel Dickinson.
Duration: 3’48”
