Interviews

Amid growing international condemnation over Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, tens of thousands of people are still trying to escape to neighbouring countries, fleeing en masse.

This has brought huge numbers to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where UN children’s fund spokesperson James Elder has been giving an update on the emotional and tense scenes he’s witnessed, to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

Five days after Russia launched a "special military operation" against Ukraine, more than 500,000 people have fled across the borders, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, reported on Monday.

Ukrainians, mostly women and children, have been escaping to Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia and beyond.

UN humanitarian agencies are on the ground and ready to increase support in what is a fast-growing refugee emergency.

UN scientists on Monday delivered a dire warning about the impact of climate change on people and planet.

The report launched by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows how climate change is affecting every continent.

Although it is a global issue, its “negative impacts fall particularly strongly on disadvantaged and poor people across the globe, who have the least ability to adapt”.

There’s no time to lose if we’re to ensure that the world after COVID-19 is fairer, more inclusive and more sustainable, UN labour agency chief Guy Ryder insists.

In an interview with UN News’ Daniel Johnson, the International Labour Organization (ILO) Director-General also offers some refreshing advice: There should be “no more programmes” and “no more plans…let's just get down to the rock face and start making progress together".

Broadcasting in indigenous languages connects these communities to culture and at times provides important information that can save people’s lives.

That’s the opinion of Rhianna Patrick, a journalist from the Torres Strait Islands, located in the western Pacific.

On World Radio Day this Sunday, 13 February, she calls for more funding for Indigenous broadcasting.

Despite rising global wealth, most people today feel anxious about the future, according to a new report from the UN Development Programme (UNDP). 

The study reveals that six in seven people worldwide are plagued by feelings of insecurity, even those in countries with some of the highest levels of good health and wealth, and this was before the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Dianne Penn spoke to Heriberto Tapia, the Research and Strategic Partnership Advisor in the Human Development Report Office at UNDP.  

Pinchas Gutter is from Łódź, Poland, where he enjoyed a very happy childhood before the Second World War. He survived six different Nazi concentration camps – a life forever changed by the traumatic events of the Holocaust. 

The worst moment of all, was when he lost his father, mother, and sister on the same day, murdered by the Nazis.

In this powerful and moving interview marking this week of Holocaust Remembrance at the UN, he tells Nathan Beriro, that he turned “almost into a nothing”. Survivors, he says, “can’t ever run away from what they have lived”. 

A dusty old suitcase that lay undiscovered for decades in a backyard shed in Australia, has revealed an astonishing story of friendship, courage and resistance to the Nazi regime and its extermination camps, where millions of Jews were systematically murdered during the Second World War. 

Letters inside the suitcase relate to an Australian family with a generational commitment to peace, whose friendship with another family in Germany, the Schindlers, produced a network bonded by a powerful sense of humanity, to save peoples' lives. 

The Chair of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), former Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete, says that although the key objective is helping disadvantaged children everywhere get access to quality schooling, supporting girls is their top priority.

In an exclusive interview with UN News, Mr. Kikwete said that gender equality is hard-wired “in everything we do”.

There was already a learning gap before the pandemic, with disadvantaged and marginalized children lagging far behind in terms of educational achievement.

Since the onset of COVID-19, which has seen millions of children affected by school closures, it has become a gulf, and by some estimates, around 70 per cent of 10-year-olds can’t read a simple piece of text.