Interviews

At COP24, thousands gathered to find concrete ways to move forward on the historic Paris Agreement.

In Libya’s capital city of Tripoli, the humanitarian crisis is so intense, pregnant women are being asked to bring their own medical supplies for doctors to deliver their babies, and in some camps for the displaced, every toilet and kitchen in the city is being shared by up to 100 people.

Those are some of the stark scenes witnessed over the past few days by UN Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Ursula Mueller, who’s just completed a five-day visit to the country.

The private sector and civil society, working in tandem, “hold the biggest promise” for making the first-ever Global Compact on migration a success for the countries who have signed up. 

That’s the opinion of Tarek Yousef, the director of the Brookings Institution at Doha Centre in Qatar; a think-tank focusing on the socio-economic and political issues facing the Middle East.

When “conflict was underway, and checkpoints were increasing everywhere” in the Syrian capital, Damascus, Sarah Zein started biking to avoid the traffic, but verbal sexual harassment on the streets, soon became a big problem.

Since then, she’s become an eco-friendly advocate for both a greener environment and the rights of women, attracting more than 4,000 girls to her cycling events, and helping increase bike ownership among women.

Many Palestinians living under Israeli occupation suffer from a “coercive environment” where settlement expansion has made people’s lives so unbearable that they feel pressured to move, according to a top UN official there.

James Heenan, head of the UN human rights office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said that permits for building in the West Bank, were “almost non-existent” now for Palestinians.

When Hurricane Maria devastated Domenica last year, it was a wake-up call for Canada’s former international goalkeeper, Karina LeBlanc to step in to the climate change fight.

With many family ties to the Caribbean island, she changed the way she eats and began biking to work, and says that “it’s time for all of us to wake up” and be part of the solution.  

The adoption of the UN global migration pact in Marrakech means that the world will see migration through “a completely different narrative”, and countries that have chosen not to sign up will eventually “change their minds.”

If countries help educate incoming migrants and refugees, they will no longer be viewed as a problem, but a valuable resource, said one 20-year-old from Côte d’Ivoire, speaking on behalf of young people, ahead of the adoption of the new UN Global Compact for Migration in Marrakech, Morocco.

Kader Diabate made the voyage alone to Italy on one of the world’s most dangerous routes – through Niger and Libya, and across the Mediterranean Sea.