Features

Scenes of relatives desperately trying to find oxygen supplies for hospitalized COVID-19 patients in India last year, alerted the world to an acute, deadly problem. Yet that was not this first time the country’s hospitals have been hit by a shortage of the life-saving gas, prompting the question of whether there will be enough supplies, when the next major health crisis hits.

Earth’s permafrost is thawing, and indigenous communities in the Arctic and scientists around the world say it’s high time this alarming loss of ground ice receives the global attention – and dedicated research – it deserves. As this phenomenon reshapes landscapes, displaces whole villages, and disrupts fragile animal habitats; it also threatens to release dangerous microorganisms and potential carbon emissions that have been locked in ice for thousands of years. 

Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and a recognized voice in the field of peacebuilding and violence prevention, is committed to the peaceful resolution of conflicts. As part of this week’s 2022 remembrance events, she recalls how she felt when she learned about the Holocaust.

During the Second World War, Pinchas Gutter, from Łódź, Poland, survived six Nazi concentration camps. Today he is a Holocaust educator, sharing his story in films and live events. As part of the 2022 remembrance events, Mr. Gutter recalls the traumatic events of his childhood, and calls for a world without discrimination or hate.

A Tongan family’s trip to visit relatives on Mango island earlier this month turned into a nightmare, when the country was devastated by the eruption of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai underwater volcano, and subsequent tsunami.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on education, laying bare a crisis that was already causing widespread concern well before the spread of the virus. Robert Jenkins, the Director of Education at the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, is calling for a transformation in learning, amid warnings that the current system is failing millions of people.

Millions of hectares of farmland are lost to the desert each year in Africa’s Sahel region, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is showing that traditional knowledge, combined with the latest technology, can turn arid ground back into fertile soil.

When a tsunami swept over much of Tonga last weekend, Joseph Sikulu, a Tongan national, was in Sydney, Australia, exiled from home by strict COVID-19 travel restrictions. For three days, with most communications lines severed, his family and friends were cut off from the outside world, and Mr. Sikulu feared the worst.

The UN Office in Geneva is celebrating a 60-year collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union of public-service broadcasters, which has helped transparent, fair and impartial television news to be seen around the world.

Despite the annihilation of two major Japanese cities in 1945, atomic bombs have not been relegated to the pages of history books, but continue to be developed today – with increasingly more power to destroy than they had when unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki back in 1945.