Interviews

The World Health Organization (WHO) says it’s extremely concerned about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Al-Hol camp in Syria’s Al-Hasakeh Governorate, where 11 infants are reported to have died due to cold, in the past two days alone.

Over the last two months, approximately 23,000 people, mainly women and children fleeing hostilities in rural areas of neighbouring Deir Ezzour, have arrived in the camp. 

The first ever Arab woman director to be nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, has told UN News that she had ‘a duty’ to record the reality of the refugee crisis playing out on the streets of her native Lebanon.

Nadine Labaki is the director of Capernaum, a harrowing drama seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy who decides to sue his own parents after years of abuse and neglect.

“A child sees things so much more clearly”, says Ms. Labaki, who spent three years researching her film, which also won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival last year.

Yumbi in the western Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, resembles a “ghost city” in the aftermath of a days-long massacre last month which left at least 535 victims, discovered by UN investigators in communal burial sites.

That’s according to Florence Marchal, spokesperson for the UN Mission in the country, MONUSCO.

“If we look at what Lake Chad was and what it is today, we understand that climate change is real, and it needs to be addressed”, the newly-appointed UN Special Representative to the African Union (AU) has told UN News in her first major interview.

Addressing the nexus between peace and security, underdevelopment and climate change, former Ghanaian Foreign Minister, Hanna Tetteh, highlighted the importance of helping Sahel countries to develop more resilience, to deal with the impact of climate change.

An important lesson for young people to learn from the Holocaust is that individuals “have more power than they realize” to make sure that history is not forgotten, according to Sara Bloomfield, Director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

About one third of all food which is grown in the Middle East and North Africa is lost or wasted, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In Egypt, that adds up to an estimated 50 kg of food per person per year, according to United Nations figures. Most of this food is lost from the farm to the table, rather than wasted at the consumer level.

That results in a loss of nutrition, which is “alarming for a country which is facing already high levels of malnutrition” says the agency.

“A global economic downturn and a lack of political leadership are a combination that could end very badly for the world’s economy”, a leading UN financial expert has warned.

In an interview with Daniel Johnson of UN News, Richard Kozul-Wright, a globalization expert and Director with the Trade and Development agency UNCTAD, gives his assessment of the “entrenched” economic factors dragging down growth. 

While the global economy will continue to grow at a steady pace of around three percent in 2019 and 2020, that growth is expected to be uneven and may fail to reach where it is most needed.

An attack by an armed group on the isolated town of Rann in north-east Nigeria has cut aid to tens of thousands of people and uprooted many more, UN humanitarians said on Friday.

With the latest information, here’s Samantha Newport from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), speaking to Daniel Johnson from UN News.