The Lid is On

Hundreds of millions of people do not have access to electricity, seriously hampering their ability to improve their development prospects.

In Arua, northern Uganda, where employment rates are low and poverty is high, the UN is supporting a company that is providing pay-as-you-go solar energy services, putting the benefits of electricity in reach of villagers who would otherwise never be able to afford it.

In Lumonga village, situated in a remote part of the West Nile region of northern Uganda, smallholder farmers have traditionally been cut off from the banking system, and been forced to rely on small savings and loans from their community to survive hard times.

Northern Uganda has higher poverty and less employment that the south of the country, which is why the UN is backing projects aimed at boosting the regional economy.

In “Developing northern Uganda”, a special four-part mini-series, we go to Yumbe and Arua districts, to see how the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is helping to create sustainable employment prospects for local people.

In our third episode looking at ocean-related issues facing the eastern Caribbean island nation of Barbados, released in the run-up to the UN Oceans Conference, we turn to the issue of the coral reef. Barbados’s reef has been declining for decades, hit by decades of pollution and the climate crisis.

This is the second in a four-part mini-series, released in the run-up to the UN Oceans Conference, exploring some of the ocean-related issues facing the eastern Caribbean island nation of Barbados. This episode focuses on the pollutants that, for decades, have poured into the coastal waters, a result of agriculture and the development of the island. In recent years, the government, with the support of the United Nations, has sought to use nature-based solutions to rectify the damage.

In a four-part mini-series, released in the run-up to the UN Oceans Conference, we explore some of the ocean-related issues facing the eastern Caribbean island nation of Barbados.

This episode concentrated on the worrying spread of sargassum seaweed, which arrived unannounced in 2011, and has been a regular fixture on much of the coastline ever since.

There’s no single answer to why the seaweed is clogging up the beaches and waters, but many scientists believe that the climate crisis is at least partly to blame.

“We can’t heal by ignoring what happened” – that’s one of the key demands for greater racial justice in the United States, from the founder of the influential 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones. For this latest edition of our ‘Lid is On’ podcast, she sat down with UN News’s Ben Malor to discuss the need for a deeper reckoning with the history of slavery at home, and worldwide - including the “essential” provision of reparations for Black Americans, today.

International Humanitarian City (IHC) in Dubai, the world’s largest humanitarian hub with some 135,000 square metres of warehouse space, has been transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, medical supplies far outstrip other emergency items stored at IHC, in terms of volume and dollar value, and the amount of material held at the hub has grown exponentially in the last few years.

As the UN independent expert on contemporary racism and intolerance, Tendayi Achiume leads a worldwide effort to combat related human rights violations and tackle systemic racism, through fact-finding missions on the ground, investigating alleged violations, and submitting her findings to the UN Human Rights Council and General Assembly in New York.

The Zambian-born law professor tells UN News that it was as an undergraduate that she became fascinated with the potential and power that international law has to ease human suffering, and help transform societies.