With only six years to the 2030 deadline, humanity is alarmingly off track in the bid to reach the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs.
Keeping track of progress is a gigantic task but one of the global tech giants – Google - is answering the call.
Since the Taliban took back power as the de facto authority in Afghanistan in 2021, women’s rights have come under attack.
Today, the country barely makes the headlines despite the ongoing suppression of women’s rights and humanitarian crises, such as earthquakes and recent floods.
Jorge Moreira da Silva, the Head of the UN Office for Project Services, recently returned from a visit to Afghanistan to inspect some of the Office’s initiatives.
The potentially transformative effects of Artificial Intelligence have been brought into focus by the UN in recent days, following a major conference in Geneva: the AI For Global Good Summit.
The title of the event says it all: how is the technology being used to further UN-endorsed goals, such as reducing inequality, tackling the climate crisis, and supporting sustainable development.
Restoring land, halting desertification and building resilience against drought are the focus of World Environment Day on 5 June.
Up to 40 per cent of the world’s land is already degraded, while more than three billion people worldwide are negatively impacted by drought, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
A medical epidemiologist working with the Indian Ocean Commission’s One Health initiative says that the number of ministers from small island States attending this week’s SIDS4 Conference in Antigua and Barbuda shows there is real “political commitment” to take urgent action.
Dr. Lovena Preeyadarshini Mangroo of Mauritius says although all five island nations that make up the Commission have similar problems, each country is different and must be properly understood before prevention and response plans to head of epidemics and other health risks can be put in place.
The developed world must increase support for small island developing States “not as an expression of generosity but of responsibility”, the UN’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction has said.
Kamal Kishore – who also heads up the Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) - was speaking to UN News in Antigua and Barbuda as the Fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS4) came to a close on Thursday.
Nearly eight months of war in Gaza have devastated the enclave’s hospitals and clinics but many skilled medical professionals are still there and committed to being part of its future, a senior UN World Health Organization (WHO) official told UN News.
“There's a lot of very capable health professionals in Gaza, and they should be very much part - they should actually be the focus - of any reconstruction and any rehabilitation process,” said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO Representative in Palestine.
They may be small islands in size – but the countries of the Caribbean are huge exporters of culture and need to remind younger generations at home of why they should feel proud of where they come from.
That’s according to Claire Nelson, a Jamaican based in the United States and founder of the advocacy-based Institute of Caribbean Studies, who’s been attending this week’s SIDS4 conference taking place on the twin island of Antigua and Barbuda.
Major Radhika Sen, an Indian peacekeeper deployed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has received the 2023 United Nations Military Gender Advocate of the Year Award.
Major Sen worked in the DRC from March 2023 through April 2024, where she amplified women’s voices, created safe spaces for men and women to work together, and promoted gender-sensitive peacekeeping.
How artificial intelligence (AI) can help advance efforts to build a more just and inclusive global future, for both people and the planet, is the focus of a two-day forum that opens in Geneva on Thursday.
The annual AI for Good Global Summit, organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), brings together leading experts in the field of AI and digital solutions to tackle some of the world’s most pressing issues – from emerging AI applications to governance and ethical considerations.
