Global

We can learn from communities like this one in Tanzania, who live and work in harmony with the local ecosystem.
© 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.

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is supporting women's economic empowerment in the world's 47 Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
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.

A family from the Hmong ethnic minority in Vietnam.
© 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.

The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine is administered to a trial volunteer.
Novavax

WHO urges effective and fair use of COVID vaccines

29 January 2021
Health

With COVID-19 vaccines currently in scarce supply, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday pressed governments to prioritize inoculation of health workers and older persons, and to share excess doses with other nations. 

An scientist studies virus samples (file)
CDC

Follow the science: UN plans for a stronger pandemic recovery

29 January 2021
Economic Development

Funders responsible for more than $100 million of annual global research investments joined the deputy UN chief Amina Mohammed on Friday to discuss how to unify research efforts, and use science to recover effectively from the COVID-19 pandemic.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres gets vaccinated against COVID-19 at Adlai Stevenson High School in the Bronx, New York.
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

UN chief receives COVID-19 vaccine in New York

28 January 2021
Health

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, received his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in the Bronx, a few miles uptown from UN Headquarters in New York.

Children eating lunch at a primary school in Burundi (file photo).
WFP/Hugh Rutherford

COVID-19: Prioritize school meals in plans to reopen classrooms, UN report says

28 January 2021
Culture and Education

Although school feeding programmes are a lifeline for millions of boys and girls, nearly 40 billion in-school meals have been missed during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report published on Thursday by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Office of Research: Inocenti, and the World Food Programme (WFP). 

A young boy who has just received treatment for Guinea worm disease in South Sudan.
© UNICEF/Anne Ackermann

‘End the scourge of neglected tropical diseases’: UN health chief

28 January 2021
Health

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) vowed on Wednesday to “end the scourge of neglected tropical diseases”, which affect more than a billion mainly poor people, and thrive where there is little access to quality health services, clean water, and sanitation.

Two boys making paper masks at the Al-Tah IDP camp in Idlib Governorate, Syria.
©UNOCHA

Make 2021 a year of possibility and hope, UN chief tells General Assembly

28 January 2021
UN Affairs

Following an “annus horribilis” of death, disaster and despair, 2021 must be a year of transformation, Secretary-General António Guterres told the UN’s 193 Member States on Thursday. 

Children stand outside the tent where they live in a remote desert camp in southern rural Homs, Syria.
© UNICEF/Abdulaziz Aldroubi

Gamba ‘deeply concerned’ over COVID impact on children caught in conflict

27 January 2021
Human Rights

Child rights must be considered in measures designed to contain coronavirus spread, the UN’s advocate for boys and girls caught in armed conflict said on Wednesday in an appeal to Member States.