General News

Managers of shelters in hurricane-ravaged Antigua and Barbuda are being trained to make sure these locations are safe spaces for women and girls.

The tiny Caribbean island nation was devastated by Hurricane Irma, a category 5 storm which struck last month.

As in other natural disasters, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) fears the resulting displacement and service disruptions could increase the risk of gender-based violence.

Designing robots which feel real emotions could benefit humanity in the years ahead.

That’s the view of Dr David Hanson, a robotics designer and creator of Sophia, an incredibly expressive and human-like robot.

Both were panelists at a UN meeting on the future and technological change held in New York on Wednesday.

The engineer and Sophia told Natalie Hutchison about the capability of these machines to mimic the complexity of human hardwiring.

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Support from the UN to help Haiti finally put an end to cholera, will continue when a new UN Mission for Justice Support, known as MINUJUSTH, begins its work next week.

That’s according to the head of the UN Stabilization Mission in the country, MINUSTAH, which ends its mandate on 15 October.

Sandra Honoré told UN News in an interview, that she believed relations between the world organization and the Haitian people were “positive” and the UN would continue to support Haitian democracy and development.

Efforts are under way to eradicate a neglected form of tuberculosis that has a particularly damaging impact on poor rural communities in Africa and South-East Asia, UN health experts said on Thursday.

Animal – or zoonotic - TB can be passed to humans through contaminated meat or dairy products and kills at least 12,000 people a year, according to new data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Back when Astronaut Scott Kelly was a military pilot in the navy, seeing a woman in his class would have been almost as common as “seeing a unicorn.”

At the UN to discuss the so-called “Space for Women” project, the retired United States astronaut, and official UN Champion for Space, shared his views on how to get more girls involved in science, technology, engineering and mathematics – known as STEM.

States which practice the death penalty often fail to release basic details of executions, even concealing them from prisoners’ family members.

That was one of the details discussed at the event, Transparency and the Death Penalty, held at UN Headquarters this week to mark World Day Against the Death Penalty.

James Connell is a lawyer from the United States who represents one of the six men facing the death penalty in the US, who are being held at the Guantánamo Bay detention centre in Cuba.

It will be impossible to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) unless the world does more to curb the damaging effects of natural and other disasters.

That’s the firm view of the man leading the UN Disaster Risk Reduction effort, UNISDR, Robert Glasser.

The UNISDR chief is adamant that there’s a connection also between climate change and the kind of hurricane activity that saw whole island economies in the Caribbean wiped out in recent weeks.

Earth observation technology can be a tool for women’s empowerment as it provides satellite imagery which can help with environmental monitoring: for example, in agriculture or with tracking infectious diseases.

That’s the view of Bolo Basuti, a research assistant at the Botswana International University of Science and Technology.

She participated in a recent event in New York organized by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) called Space for Women.

Medical staff trying to keep basic services going on the devastated Caribbean island of Dominica urgently need support, including reliable food supplies.

That’s the plea from Clemens Buter, team leader in Dominica for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), in an interview on the hurricane-ravaged island, with UN News.

He said that 29 out of 49 health centres suffered “severe” damage when Category 5 Hurricane Maria struck the island on 18 September.

Transitioning from cash to digital payments could save Ghana’s government more than US$200 million over the next four years, a UN-backed study has found.

The report shows the West African country has made strides in switching over already, with nearly 100 per cent of public service pay-outs—such as salaries and pensions—being made digitally.

Camilo Tellez is Head of Research and Development at the Better Than Cash Alliance, which conducted the study.

He said digital payments promote transparency and security, as well as access to the formal banking system.