Irrepressible comedian AK Dans was born in the world’s largest refugee camp, Kakuma, in Kenya, after his mother fled South Sudan in the 1990s. 

He’s now a successful stand-up artist – or was - until the COVID-19 crisis put a temporary halt to his live shows. 

But you can’t keep a good man down for long, and now AK’s latest challenge is taking part in an online show with the support of UN refugee agency, UNHCR. 

The death rate through hunger and starvation in World War Two, rivals the number of those killed in combat. By 1945, agriculture had effectively ground to a halt, leaving hundreds of millions to survive on the equivalent of two potatoes a day.  

It was against this desperate backdrop that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was born.  Marking the UN agency’s 75th anniversary, FAO’s Andre Vornic has produced a short podcast series on the founding of the key UN agency. In this first episode, ‘a hungry world rolls up its sleeves’. 

Donating goods overseas after disasters can be unhelpful and even harmful, and with the Pacific Cyclone season now in full swing, the World Food Programme (WFP) has begun a campaign urging people to donate more responsibly.  

Julia Dean from the UN Country Team in Australia spoke to Jo Pilgrim, Director of WFP’s Pacific Multi-Country office in Fiji, and started by asking her what the most donated items were.  

All around the world, people, plants and animals are dying from infections that cannot be treated – even with the best medicines available. 

That is because of the rise in antimicrobial resistance - the increasing failure of antibiotics and other life-saving drugs to treat diseases. 

It is a global problem that threatens to be the cause of the next pandemic, as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Chief Veterinary Officer Keith Sumption explains to FAO’s Charlotta Lomas.