UN Secretary-General's address to the Opening of the General Debate of the 75th Session of the General Assembly, on Tuesday, 22 September 2020.
UN Secretary-General's opening remarks at #UNGA press conference, on 16 September 2020
“New York City has always been proud to host the United Nations”, Penny Abeywardena, New York City’s Commissioner for International Affairs told UN News.
Although the COVID-19 virus outbreak has been designated a pandemic, containment is still possible, and there is no need to panic. This is the official advice from the World Health Organization (WHO).
After he took part in a media briefing at the UN health agency’s headquarters on Friday, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jašarević spoke to Daniel Johnson from UN News about the appropriate responses need by governments and citizens worldwide to the outbreak.
It’s time that humankind realizes “that nature doesn’t exist for us”, the Head of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) office in New York has said, just ahead of World Wildlife Day.
Assistant Secretary-General Satya Tripathi described 2020 as a “super year for nature”, warning that we are currently standing on “the precipice of complete annihilation”.
Recent reductions in the costs of diagnosing and treating viral hepatitis should be an incentive for countries to scale up investments in disease elimination.
That’s the view of the World Health Organization which is calling on all countries to take advantage of the lower costs and match investments to eliminate the disease.
Ahead of World Hepatitis Day, marked this Sunday, WHO’s hepatitis team leader, Dr. Marc Bulterys spoke spoke to UN News’s Samuel Mungai, and explained prevention measures that some countries are taking to protect against hepatitis related diseases.
The sense that winning the battle against AIDS is a done-deal, has been slowing progress on reducing new HIV infections, and in reality, it’s “far from over”, according to the chief of the UN agency dedicated to tackling the virus.
And what is more, Gunilla Carlsson, the acting Executive Director of UNAIDS, says that if we forget about people at risk, such as intravenous drug users, men who have sex with men and sex workers, “we will not solve the problem with the rise of new HIV infections”.
Following a series of bomb blasts on Easter Sunday that killed over 250 people and injured many more, concerns have remained for the safety of refugees and asylum seekers living in Sri Lanka.
UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has been working since “day one” with local partners and the Government, in the aftermath of the 21 April attacks on upscale hotels and Christian churches, following reports of Muslim refugees being targeted by angry mobs.
The world has seen huge changes since the League of Nations was born 100 years ago, but its twin aims of promoting peace and wellbeing live on today in the work of the United Nations.
That’s the strong belief of Blandine Blukacz-Louisfert, Chief of the Institutional Memory Section at the UN Library in Geneva, who explained to Daniel Johnson of UN News, how the League was also ahead of its time in raising the alarm about climate threats, such as pollution.
Drought in Afghanistan has left more than 3.6 million people “barely surviving” and displaced some 250,000 people from rural areas, the UN’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan said on Monday, warning that 2019 could be “make or break” for the country’s people.
