Features

“You know you are saying something right,” Stevie Wonder told reporters at UN Headquarters on his birthday in 1985. “I really don’t mind being banned. The sad thing is, I’d like to see South Africa, and I’d like to unite with my brothers and sisters in South Africa, but as long as this condition exists in the world, we cannot continue to support it as a country, as a people. We did away with it here. We can damn sure do away with it there.” 

Trinidad and Tobago is described as one of the “frontline States”, those nations that are most severely affected by the impact of the climate emergency, and youth activists are among the most prominent voices in the country calling for stronger action to combat the crisis, both at home and abroad.

Camels, long known as the ships of the desert, have played an important role helping the UN from as early as the 1940s in driving up global vaccination rates and delivering lifesaving aid.

A small but growing number of countries are well on their way to producing all of their electricity from renewable sources. Dominica, in the eastern Caribbean, is planning to join these pioneers and become the first small island developing State (SIDS) to stop using fossil fuels for energy generation.

Bassem Al-Habal carried a large bag of flour provided by the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, inside one of the shelters in the city of Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, part of his daily journey to find food and water for his family while overcoming displacement, bombardment and the challenges of being deaf and mute in a war zone.

The General Assembly designated 22 April as International Mother Earth Day through a resolution adopted in 2009, but the roots of the Day go back to the 1970s.

Plastic pollution blocks rivers, chokes oceans and makes its way into the food chain as microplastics. It’s a global environmental crisis, and small island developing States are especially vulnerable, having to cope with detritus washing up on their beaches, as well as the waste they generate themselves. 

Dominica aims to become the world’s first “climate-resilient" nation, and the indigenous Kalinago people are playing a leading role in developing the country and helping its people to thrive in the face of the climate emergency.

Rape. Murder. Hunger. Corpses filling streets, making it impossible to walk. Sudan was plunged into an ongoing, devastating war one year ago on 15 April, leaving in its wake almost 15,000 dead, eight million civilians on the run, 25 million in dire need of assistance and warnings from humanitarians about famine, aid blockades and a growing list of atrocities on all sides.

Against the backdrop of a humanitarian crisis and gang violence in Haiti, UN agencies are warning that children are suffering not just from a lack of schooling but also through witnessing violence.