UN Interviews

The illegal cocaine trade has bounced back following COVID-19 lockdowns, with coca cultivation up by more than a third from 2020 to 2021, according to a new report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Speaking to UN News, UNODC’s chief analyst for the Global Report on Cocaine 2023, said new routes and networks had emerged, with global supply now at record levels.

Brazil has emerged as a major hub, and there’s concern demand is rising fast in West Africa and Asia, as Ms. Me told Pauline Batista.

As if the situation wasn’t bad enough for people facing starvation in the Greater Horn of Africa region, now UN humanitarians have warned that they’re in the grip of surging disease, linked to malnutrition.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda, have been particularly affected.

All seven countries are battling measles outbreaks, four have reported cholera outbreaks and malaria is a serious threat in Sudan.

As South Sudan prepares for elections in 2024, the world’s youngest nation sits at a fork in the road. Progress towards a lasting peace include the need to hold fair elections, open civic spaces, and improved security. It also means having an inclusive constitution built for all. But, right now, stark choices must be made, and 2023 is a “make or break” year, as Nicholas Haysom, who heads the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), tells UN News’s Eileen Travers.

Survivors of decades of conflict in the Horn of Africa have told the UN how hunger and drought have finally uprooted them from their homes. To help 3.3 million people who’ve been displaced in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, issued an urgent appeal this week for $137 million. UN News's Daniel Johnson spoke to the agency’s Olga Sarrado.

One year since Russia invaded Ukraine, UN food security experts are more concerned than ever about the global cost of living crisis that the war has fuelled. 

In 2023, they’ve warned that the conflict could leave many developing countries – and particularly in Africa - facing potentially dire shortages of the essential foodstuffs that they used to import from the Black Sea neighbours.  

This Friday will mark a year since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

For the World Health Organization (WHO), providing humanitarian support is the key priority during conflicts and other crises, said Dr. Jarno Habicht, the agency’s representative in the country. 

Ahead of the grim anniversary, he spoke to UN News’s Andrei Muchnik about WHO’s ongoing operations amid missile and drone attacks, and how many local colleagues “have lost everything except their work”. 

Somaya Faruqi is one of the lucky ones. She managed to escape from Afghanistan in August 2021, just as the Taliban overran the country’s capital. Today, while the 20-year-old engineering student pursues a degree in the US, her former classmates back home have been banned from the classroom. In support of this week’s Education Cannot Wait conference in Geneva and its call for learning support in emergencies, Somaya has been speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

The women of earthquake and war-ravaged northwest Syria all have the same message for the international community: help establish peace and restore some sense of hope for the future.

That’s according to Laila Baker from the UN sexual and reproductive health agency UNFPA, who has been telling UN News what she’s seen and heard on the ground in Syria, in the past nine days of frantic relief efforts to save lives following the disaster.

Nearly one year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the scale of destruction in the south and east has been massive - so much so, that one senior UN humanitarian worker has told UN News some towns “don’t even exist anymore”. To help the vulnerable communities struggling to survive, the UN migration agency, IOM, has been stepping up aid and support. That includes towns like Znamyanka in central Ukraine, as IOM’s Johannes Fromholt has been telling Daniel Johnson.

Aid teams on the ground in Syria are working round the clock to help those displaced by last week’s earthquake disaster, but the needs remain massive, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday. In Aleppo, where families have found shelter in schools, mosques and churches, the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination team (UNDAC) expressed concern that conditions are cramped and unsuitable. With more, here’s UNDAC Syria chief Samir Elhawary, speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.