Interviews

India has embarked on one of the largest COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in the world, with more than 2,600  WHO staff training nearly half a million team members.

That’s according to Dr. Roderico H. Ofrin, Representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in India, which is one of the main UN agencies supporting the government-led drive. 

Anshu Sharma asked Dr. Ofrin about WHO’s work there, including efforts to counter hesitancy and misinformation surrounding vaccination.

The equivalent of 255 million full-time jobs were lost in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recovery next year is likely to be slow – but it’s not all bad news, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO). 

The head of the UN migration agency, IOM, is strongly advocating for governments everywhere to respect the “fundamental right of healthcare” when it comes to ensuring vulnerable migrants and the displaced get equal access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Nearly 60,000 people from Ethiopia’s volatile Tigray region have now crossed the border to remote southeastern Sudan, after more than two months of fighting, many with just the clothes on their backs. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to hamper the efforts of developing countries to adapt to the climate crisis. This is the analysis of Dr. Henry Neufeld, a climate mitigation expert, and one of the authors of the forthcoming report on climate change from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

Dr. Neufeld is the guest in this episode of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) State of the Planet podcast, in which host Tim Albone grills him about what climate adaptation actually means, and asks for his take on the latest UNEP Adaptation Gap report.

Migration is part of the modern world, and it is not going away despite a COVID slowdown, a UN official has told UN News, just ahead of a new UN migration report launched on Friday.

Jorge Bravo, the head of the Population Policies and Development Branch at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), explained to Conor Lennon from UN News that it has never been easier or faster to move around the world, which is more integrated and connected than ever before.

Compared to last year, everything is in place to successfully fight the devastating desert locust swarms that have been threatening food supplies and livelihoods across the Horn of Africa region, according to the senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official, in charge of forecasting the pest’s movements.

Charlotta Lomas spoke to Keith Cressman, who said that $80 million was still needed to control the scourge, through the coming months.

What progress is the world making in adapting to the changing climate? And can nature itself provide the answers? This is the focus of the first episode of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) State of the Planet podcast.

Host Tim Albone speaks to Valerie Kapos, head of the Climate Change & Biodiversity Programme of the UNEP’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre. She and her team look at the role of “nature-based solutions”, which involve maintaining and restoring ecosystems such as mangrove forests, which provide protection against rising sea levels and extreme weather.

After years of drought, and with what little the people of Madagascar have managed to grow, destroyed by flashflooding, more than 1.3 million are in crisis - and some are even eating ground-up clay just to survive. 

Movement restrictions relating to COVID-19 have also made it impossible for the poorest of the poor to find work to tide them over the lean season, the World Food Programme, WFP, has warned. 

Homeworking has necessarily exploded since the COVID-19 pandemic took a grip on the world in 2020, with the UN labour agency (ILO) estimating that it may have more than doubled, from around 260 million people in 2019, to some 580 million.

A new ILO report, released on Wednesday, lays out the penalties paid by those now having to work from home, which include higher health risks, lower wages, and social isolation.