At the top of the news agenda on Wednesday: updates on violence in Sudan’s Darfur and in Libya, how e-waste can become an employment opportunity, help for the 2 million affected by floods in Iran, and efforts to make the internet safer for children.
On Tuesday, top stories include: UNESCO ready to assist in rebuilding Notre Dame in the wake of a devastating fire; Nicaraguan refugees reach 60,000, a year after the crisis started; concern in Libya regarding medical access as hostilities continue; and one million reached with food assistance in Mozambique.
Two-thirds of the largely medieval roof of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris have “gone” after the devastating fire in Paris on Monday evening, but UN cultural experts are standing by to offer help where it is needed in rebuilding the iconic structure.
Top news on Monday includes: UN chief expresses his horror over the huge blaze in Notre Dame; a deal over Hudaydah troop withdrawal beckons, but war intensifies; “global measles crisis” underway.
Speaking in Cairo’s historic al-Azhar mosque on Tuesday, UN chief António Guterres issued a call for societies, faiths and cultures everywhere to “focus on what unites us”, urging everyone to work together towards realizing the 2030 Agenda “for the collective benefit of all”.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged artificial intelligence (AI) experts meeting in Geneva on Monday to push ahead with their work to restrict the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems, or LAWS, as they are also known.
A teacher holds up a drawing of an adolescent girl who has just been caught unawares by her first menstruation cycle, while at school. She’s addressing neat rows of young women sitting in class, in the town of Bol, in Chad.
Paying tribute to reporters around the world who “put their lives on the line” to tell important stories, UN chief António Guterres lamented on Monday that freedom of the press was increasingly “shrinking” worldwide, and called on decision-makers to better protect journalists and media workers.
Gender equality, the marginalization of indigenous languages, migration, the refugee crisis, the lives of domestic workers, poverty… All these issues which are at the heart of the United Nations’ work, are also front and centre in some of the films celebrated this year at the Academy Awards.
Concerned that one language goes extinct every two weeks, the United Nations is honouring linguistic diversity and celebrating indigenous languages on International Mother Language Day. And the roots of the Day start in a South-Asian country with a bloody and historic connection to 21 February.
