UN Interviews

The arms trade involves almost every country in the world, but more action is needed to consider how the $100 billion a year industry impacts on gender-based violence, the head of a key treaty said on Thursday.

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Ambassador Jānis Kārkliņš of Latvia, President of the 5th Arms Trade Treaty Conference of States Parties meeting in Geneva next week, explains how for the first time, the treaty’s signatories are expected to agree to look at gender as a criteria for weapons exports in future.

The senior UN official tasked with overseeing a plan of action to ensure that religious sites are safe, and that worshippers can observe their rituals in peace, has delivered a draft to the Secretary-General, following consultations with governments, religious leaders, faith-based organizations and other relevant stakeholders.

Miguel Angel Moratinos, the High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), spoke to UN News on the first-ever International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief. 

The Somali people have demonstrated “heroism and resilience” in the face of ongoing insecurity caused by “senseless terrorist attacks”; that’s according to the UN’s most senior representative in the Horn of Africa country.

James Swan, who is the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Somalia was speaking at UN Headquarters in New York, ahead of briefing the Security Council on Wednesday.

The work of female humanitarians is hugely important and often comes at significant personal cost.

That’s according to Melissa Fleming, currently the communications chief for refugee agency UNHCR, but soon to take up her new post as head of Global Communications at the UN, who’s been speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson at a special World Humanitarian Day event in Geneva.

First, though, we’ll hear from Adiba Qasim, who was also at the event; she survived an ISIL massacre in Iraq in 2014 that claimed the lives of 70 family members.

Young people in Chad are joining outlawed terrorist groups “because of ignorance,” according to a traditional leader in one of the most insecure and unstable parts of the West African country.

Youssouf Mbodou Mbami is the chief of the Canton of Bol and presides over a large swathe of Lake Chad, an area where many young people have been recruited or forced to join terrorist groups, such as Boko Haram.

Transformative change is needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – mobilizing civil society and individuals - but also through securing “national and a global leadership”.

That’s according to the President of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), Mr. Ola Elvestuen, who is also Norway’s Minister of Environment.

More than 100 leading scientists from all regions of the globe contributed to a major new UN report on the effects on climate change on land that was published on Thursday.

One of those experts is Dr. Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and in an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, she warns that although land use today is “absolutely unsustainable” for many reasons, it can also be part of the solution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

At the beginning of 2019, the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Cyprus (UNFICYP) became the first Mission in the history of the Organization to be led solely by women: Mission chief Elizabeth Spehar, senior police advisor Ann-Kristen Kvilekval, and Force Commander Major-General Cheryl Pearce.

Together, the three women oversee more than 1,000 military, police, and civilian staff supervising the ceasefire line, maintaining the buffer zone, and working to find a political solution to the ongoing differences between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

From becoming a school teacher to training as a football player, 40 girls between the ages of 6 and 18 trapped in humanitarian crises shared their dreams with award-winning photographer Vincent Tremeau.

A photographer for the UN office coordinating humanitarian affairs, known as OCHA, Mr. Tremeau explained that “it started as a game” in which the girls dressed up in clothes depicting what they would like to be as adults.

Fighting hunger and all forms of malnutrition has been the mandate of José Graziano da Silva, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Agency (FAO), during his eight years at the helm.

As the UN agency enters a new leadership phase, Mr. Graziano da Silva reflects on his time as Director General of FAO. 

He spoke to FAO's Charlotta Lomas.