Interviews

An estimated 160,000 people in Gaza now face going hungry as the escalation of violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and across the border into Israel, continues into its second week, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

In addition to seeing that they get enough to eat, another priority for the agency’s Country Director in Palestine, Samer AbdelJaber, is making sure that his aid team stays safe – because they’re inside the enclave where airstrikes are continuing too, as he explains to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

As India confronts a devastating second wave of COVID-19 infections, with some 300,000 cases a day, securing essential oxygen equipment is “the need of the hour”. 

That’s the message from Dr. Yasmin Ali Haque, Representative of the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, in the country. 

The UN agency has been supporting pandemic response in India for more than a year, where it has been “all hands on deck”, she said. 

The United Nations has deployed all the personnel and resources at its disposal to help Indians deal with the deadly surge in COVID-19 that has seen more than 300,000 reported new cases per day, for almost two weeks now, and left many hospitals overwhelmed.

Press freedom should be seen as the “by-product of healthy political society", according to an exiled journalist from Myanmar, where the crisis following the military coup, is now in its fourth month.

Near daily pro-democracy protests are being held across the country, which have been met with a crackdown by security forces. There are reports that hundreds have been killed and countless more wounded, including media workers and journalists.

Media which serves the public interest, not only provides vital information communities need to take informed action, it also dispels misinformation, strengthens democratic accountability and boosts sustainable development.

That’s the view of Sheetal Vyas, Founding Executive Director of International Fund for Public Interest Media, who says that amidst COVID-19, accurate and timely information is also a lifesaving public good.

A shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea that claimed the lives of 130 migrants last week, has reignited the debate about why more can’t be done to protect these vulnerable people who’ve risked everything.

Latest research from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that climate change has not slowed down during the pandemic – and that action to reverse increasing greenhouse gas emissions, is more urgent than ever.

There will be “no damage whatsoever” to the environment from the discharge of seawater used to cool the broken reactors at Fukushima nuclear plant, the head of the UN atomic energy agency, Rafael Grossi, has insisted. 

Although people’s concerns are totally justified, it is also worth bearing in mind that the filtering process used to strip the water of radioactive elements is used at nuclear power stations all around the world – as Mr. Grossi tells UN News’s Daniel Johnson. 

Fighting is ongoing in Ethiopia’s Tigray, where the level of cruelty against women and children is “incomprehensible” and likely vastly under-reported.

The Saami people have lived in northern Europe long before borders divided the region up into the Member States we know today.
In Finland, generations of Saami children have attended State-run boarding schools, including this year’s now two-time chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Anne Nuorgam, whose experiences as a young girl not only left an indelible mark but also informed her life’s choices.