Interviews

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.

The world’s first global poll conducted during the COVID-19 crisis to ask people what their biggest needs, hopes and fears are, 75 years after the UN was founded, has turned up some surprising findings.

One of them, perhaps, is the fact that more people in low and middle income countries, than in rich nations, called for greater global solidarity for communities badly hit by the pandemic. 

Well over 2,500 migrants and refugees have been forced to sleep rough in Bosnia-Herzegovina for several weeks – on the European Union’s doorstep – despite the fact that suitable sheltered accommodation is available. 

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Peter Auweraert, chief of mission in Bosnia for the UN Migration Agency IOM, describes the difficulties of trying to find a quick solution to the urgent problem.  

In this final special 75th anniversary podcast from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Andre Vornic looks at the continuing struggle to not just keep people alive, but help them thrive through access to healthy, nutritious food, on an equitable basis. 

The agency in 2021 is working on finally achieving food security for all – with nutrition, diplomacy, technological advances and environmental sustainability all in play. 

In this second podcast from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) marking the agency’s 75th birthday, Andre Vornic tracks how FAO helped make the dream of a “world of plenty” more of a reality in the post-World War Two period, in the fight against hunger and inequality.  

Audio credits: producer and reporter: Andre Vornic, post-production: Eric Deleu 

The Security Council on Tuesday voted to end the hybrid UN-African Union civilian support operation for Darfur, UNAMID, beginning the drawdown on 1 January.

Presidential elections are scheduled to take place in the Central African Republic this Sunday, despite violence that has threatened to disrupt the nationwide poll.

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, one of top UN officials there, Denise Brown, describes what’s at stake, in her capacity as the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, and stressed that rumours of armed groups marching on the capital, were simply false.