Latest Features

Sarah Copland

First Person: A mother’s ‘indescribable’ pain six months after the Beirut explosion

13 February 2021
Peace and Security

Six months after a massive explosion destroyed much of the centre of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, a mother has been talking about the “indescribable” grief she has experienced at losing her two-year-old son to injuries sustained in the blast.

Rimma Mukhtarova and Sabina Baki

FROM THE FIELD: The teenage Uzbek girls using science to help their community

13 February 2021
Women

Young women in Uzbekistan are using technology to help improve the lives of those around them, challenging perceptions of the roles that women and girls play in society.

© UNU/H. Peijpers

FROM THE FIELD: Women scientists on the power of education to reach gender equality

11 February 2021
Women

Women are extremely under-represented in science, but a UN research centre in The Netherlands is trying to address the gender imbalance, by raising awareness of the leading role that women researchers play in tackling global problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNFPA

FROM THE FIELD: COVID-19 increasing risk of female genital mutilation

6 February 2021
Women

The COVID-19 pandemic is increasing the risk of female genital mutilation or FGM, with the UN predicting that an additional two million girls will be subjected to the practice in the next ten years.

UNEP

First Person: Digging for victory in the Philippines

3 February 2021
Economic Development

Some farming techniques can have a devastating and negative effect on the environment, as farmers seek to harvest the maximum amount of produce from their land, but the efforts of a Filipino chef and activist are demonstrating that, with the right approach, agriculture can help to regenerate land, offer protection from the effects of climate change and extreme weather, and improve livelihoods.

© FAO/Felipe Rodríguez

FROM THE FIELD: Celebrating the power of centuries-old farming techniques

31 January 2021
Climate and Environment

Sustainability is not new: communities have been living in harmony with their surroundings for hundreds, if not thousands of years. As the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration begins, the UN is celebrating some of the most remarkable agricultural systems found around the world.

UNCDF

Fair Finance: The women entrepreneurs lifting communities out of poverty

31 January 2021
SDGs

Helping women start and grow businesses in the world’s poorest countries is a path to lifting them and their families out of poverty, the high-profile businesswoman, and new UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) Goodwill Ambassador Sonia Gardner, has told UN News, in the second of our two part series this weekend, on the role the financial sector can play in reducing inequality.

© IFAD/ Todd M. Henry

FROM THE FIELD: COVID crisis creates new wave of self-reliance for Tonga

30 January 2021
Economic Development

Although Tonga, an archipelago in the South Pacific, has so far avoided COVID-19 cases, the pandemic has hit the economy hard along with the entire region, and helped Tongans become more resilient and less reliant on expensive food imports.

© UNICEF/Truong Viet Hung

Fair Finance: How can the global inequality gap be narrowed?

30 January 2021
SDGs

Reducing inequality is one of the UN’s flagship goals, but the gulf between rich and poor worldwide, remains persistently high. In the first of a special two-part series on the financial sector this weekend, Hiro Mizuno, the newly-appointed UN Special Envoy on Innovative Finance and Sustainable Investments, explains how the industry can help to create a fairer, more equitable world.

ILO

FROM THE FIELD: The Myanmar child workers risking their lives for stones

28 January 2021
Human Rights

Thirteen-year-old Min Min scavenges day and night for precious stones in a quarry in Hpakant, northern Myanmar, where perilous conditions have led to the deaths of many workers. With more than a million children working in the country, the UN is fighting to end child labour worldwide.