The Lid is On

When it started, less than a decade ago, Formula E, the fully electric car racing championship, struggled to be taken seriously by the motorsports industry.

But today, major manufacturers are queuing up to be involved in the series, which is growing in popularity, just like the electric cars it has been designed to promote.

Backed by the UN, Formula E’s success is part of the biggest push ever - from governments, manufacturers, and consumers - to end our reliance on polluting, fossil-fuelled engines.

Refugee farmers who grew up cultivating crops in Somalia have returned to the land, albeit in the United States, decades after fleeing their country’s civil war.

They’ve been resettled in the US state of Maine after living for years in UN-supported refugee camps in Kenya.

They are among thousands of Somalis who fled persecution and conflict in the Horn of Africa country who benefitted from resettlement programmes in third countries like the US.

For this latest Lid is On podcast from UN News, Daniel Dickinson reports from Maine.

The unprecedented rise in people requiring humanitarian assistance will continue unless countries collaborate better to combat conflict, climate change and disease, including COVID-19.

That’s the firm belief of the UN’s top aid official, Mark Lowcock, who leaves this week after four years heading its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

He spoke in depth to UN News’s Dianne Penn.

Music credit: Ketsa, ‘Wounds’

Today, women are still in the minority across Vanuatu’s Police Department, but times are changing.

When Sergeant Bianca Simeon joined the Vanuata Police Maritime wing 11 years ago, she was their first woman recruit. Inspector Lili Joel is one of only two women superintendents, and Sera Bula Joseph is one of the rare women police engineers.

Vanuatu’s national parliament doesn’t have a single woman member, but two activists from different generations are committed to changing the gender politics of the island nation.

In the second episode of Island Voices, a three-part podcast series produced by the UN Office for Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS), law student and activist Georgilla Worwor, and Anthea Arukole, a former political advisor to the Vanuatu Government, discuss their political ambitions.

In the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, young women are taking their long boards to the water, refusing to accept the idea that surfing is only for men.

Risma has been surfing since a very young age and, in the face of the challenges that come with being a woman pioneer in a male-dominated sport, she has reached a highly competitive level, and is inspiring a new generation of girls and young women to ride the waves.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated 76 years ago this week, and to mark Holocaust remembrance day in late January, the corridors of UN Headquarters are normally filled with the stories of survivors who come to bear witness. 

But this year, the annual commemoration programme was held online for the first time ever, due to COVID-19, under the theme “Facing the Aftermath: Recovery and Reconstitution after the Holocaust”.  

Hunger is often associated with developing countries, but food insecurity is also present in higher income countries, including the richest country in the world, the United States.

The UN wants more people to understand that a way to effectively tackle the problem, and take a big step towards ending hunger, is to reduce the billions of tonnes of food that are lost and wasted each year.

In the midst of COVID-19, we have an historic opportunity to look at the world as it is, based on the facts, and then focus on collective solutions, according to a special project undertaken by the United Nations this year to mark its 75th anniversary, and the fifth anniversary of the game-changing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Tune in to this special edition of our Lid is On podcast -Nations United: Urgent Solutions for Urgent Times, hosted by Hollywood great, Julia Roberts.