Interviews

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.

Irrepressible comedian AK Dans was born in the world’s largest refugee camp, Kakuma, in Kenya, after his mother fled South Sudan in the 1990s. 

He’s now a successful stand-up artist – or was - until the COVID-19 crisis put a temporary halt to his live shows. 

But you can’t keep a good man down for long, and now AK’s latest challenge is taking part in an online show with the support of UN refugee agency, UNHCR. 

How do you keep the cameras rolling as a member of one of the biggest TV broadcast organizations in the world, in the middle of a global health crisis?

That’s been the challenge for Liz Corbin, Head of News at the European Broadcasting Union, a public service provider, whose members' programmes reach more than a billion people in dozens of countries.

The death rate through hunger and starvation in World War Two, rivals the number of those killed in combat. By 1945, agriculture had effectively ground to a halt, leaving hundreds of millions to survive on the equivalent of two potatoes a day.  

In a world facing famine, major migration and conflict exacerbated by COVID-19, the UN, including its foundational body the Economic and Social Council, known as ECOSOC, is “vital” to promote global peace and cooperation. 

That’s according to Munir Akram, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN, who was elected ECOSOC President in July.

Donating goods overseas after disasters can be unhelpful and even harmful, and with the Pacific Cyclone season now in full swing, the World Food Programme (WFP) has begun a campaign urging people to donate more responsibly.  

Via the website www.donateresponsibly.org, the user is taken on a journey to discover why donations of things like clothing and food, which are thought to be helpful, may in fact have the opposite effect.  

Following a decade of political instability and conflict, Libyans are on the path to peace and the international community “needs to do its part”, which includes respecting an arms embargo, the top UN official there has said, in an exclusive interview with our UN News Arabic team.

Stephanie Williams, Acting Special Representative of the Secretary-General, commended the first round of political talks between the Government of National Accord and the Libyan National Army, held last week in Tunisia.

All around the world, people, plants and animals are dying from infections that cannot be treated – even with the best medicines available. 

That is because of the rise in antimicrobial resistance - the increasing failure of antibiotics and other life-saving drugs to treat diseases. 

The Asia-Pacific region is home to some of the most advanced space-faring nations on the planet; but at the same time, many countries there are lagging behind when it comes to developing space technology. 

The Black Lives Matter movement that is sweeping the world, has its origins in the transatlantic slave trade of the 16th century, and new impetus today, to honour and preserve the resting places of those who were enslaved, and their descendants.  

Back in the 1990s, Peggy King Jorde was working as a designer in the New York City mayor’s office when she heard that a building slated for construction was due to be built on top of an African-American burial ground in lower Manhattan.