Interviews

Sudan has been hit by devastating floods, the worst seen in decades, impacting more than 600,000 households across 17 of the country’s 18 states.  

With homes destroyed and farmland damaged just ahead of the harvest season, it’s been another shock amid multiple crises.  

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), urgent funding is needed to support a country already facing alarmingly high rates of hunger and food insecurity.  

Dominique Burgeon, FAO’s Director of emergency resilience, has just returned from a mission to Sudan. 

Once the COVID-19 pandemic is behind us, all indications are, that cities are going to be “greener, cleaner, quieter, safer and more secure”.  

That’s the strong belief of iconic international architect Norman Foster, who’s been sharing this sustainable view with mayors from dozens of cities at a UN Economic Commission for Europe event in Geneva. 

With high level meetings on-going to address the climate and biodiversity crisis centre stage at UN Headquarters, one of the Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group members is urging world leaders to make sure their decisions get back to the people that help shape policy on the ground. 

Ernest Gibson is co-coordinator for 350 Fiji, a regional youth-led climate change network in the Pacific, driven by young climate leaders, and he told Julia Dean of our UN Country Team in Australia, it was important to let groups like his, know that they’ve made a difference. 

Many countries still have COVID-19 related restrictions on social gatherings, but the UN system is fighting to ensure that as many schools as possible can stay open, citing the critical, diverse services they provide children.

Robert Jenkins is UNICEF’s education chief, and he told UN News’s Conor Lennon that the full weight of the UN has been brought to bear on this enormous challenge.
 

The number of plants and animals on the planet that are at risk today would be far higher without globally agreed safeguards and action to protect them - but it still far from good enough - UN biodiversity experts said on Tuesday. 

All parties to the conflict in Yemen - and the humanitarian catastrophe that it has created – are responsible for terrible crimes which should be investigated by an international criminal probe. 

That’s the message from rights investigator Melissa Parke; she’s part of a Human Rights Council panel which is calling for the Security Council to address what she calls a “pandemic of impunity”.  

Here she is talking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson about the findings of the Group Of Experts’ latest report into the war-torn country. 

Keeping COVID-19 infections at bay among Palestinian refugees has never been so important at the start of this new academic year, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has said. 

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, agency spokesperson Tamara Alrifai explains how the agency has put changes in place to keep the 5.6 million people it helps safe in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank - including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. 

Recognized as one of Africa’s foremost thought leaders, and a powerful advocate for agricultural reform, Agnes Kalibata is responsible for running the first-ever UN Food Systems Summit.

In an interview with Conor Lennon from UN News, Ms. Kalibata, the Secretary-General’s Envoy for the event, outlines the ways that food systems are negatively impacting the world, and how she plans to use the Summit to address these problems.

She began by acknowledging that the term “Food Systems” is not widely understood, and explained why it is so important to tackle the issue.
 

For many children, their safest place is at home. In Beirut, last month’s huge explosion that devasted the port and surrounding neighbourhoods, changed that forever.

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, child protection officer Roula Abi Saad, describes what UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is doing to address their fears, in safe spaces dotted around Lebanon’s capital city.

With the added stress created by rising numbers of COVID-19 infections, it’s important to explain to children that their fears are a normal reaction in an abnormal situation, she explains.

Documenting women’s empowerment globally is the theme of this year’s Mobile Film Festival, co-organized by UN Women, the UN agency that promotes gender equality.   

People everywhere are invited to participate by submitting one-minute films shot on their mobile phones before the deadline of 20 October. 

Cristina Silveiro spoke to Bruno Smadja who founded the festival, now in its 16th international edition.