The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is celebrating 70 years of bringing countries across the continent together to cooperate on a wide range of issues, including trade, transport, sustainable development and food safety, which impact the daily lives of its citizens.
The ground-breaking, United Nations-backed International Finance Facility for Education is vital to ensure that half of the world’s children don’t miss out on the basic schooling needed to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In 2012, Malala Yousafzai made headlines all over the world when she was shot by the Taliban for speaking out on the right of education for girls. But instead of silencing her, the brutal attack only served to embolden the Pakistani teenager, who has used her voice to promote the right of every child to safe, free and quality primary and secondary education.
A “vanguard brigade” of UN Peacekeepers which can be deployed within 60 days to new trouble-spots, would have been “impossible” to envisage just two years ago.
The Paris Agreement on climate change remains a momentous diplomatic success, universally supported by all countries when it was adopted in 2015 at a United Nations conference, and as of today, it has been ratified by 141 nations, surpassing the threshold for its entry into force.
For over 400 years, more than 15 million men, women and children were the victims of the tragic transatlantic slave trade – one of the darkest chapters in human history – commemorated by the United Nations every year on 25 March, the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the outcome of the World Summit in which it, inter alia, underscored that each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
Over a year ago, on 20 February 2016, Tropical Cyclone Winston made a category 5 landfall along the north coast of Fiji's largest, most populous island, Viti Levu, killing at least 44 people, and grounding flights to and from the Pacific Island nation.
A day before negotiations on the crisis in Syria kick off in Geneva, the United Nations Special Envoy for the war-torn country acknowledged that while he is “not expecting a breakthrough,” the proactive momentum needs to be sustained, and the top United Nations relief official told the Security Council that the country’s humanitarian needs would remain critical for a long time.
Sounding the alarm on behalf of more than 20 million people in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and north-east Nigeria facing devastating levels of food insecurity, Secretary-General António Guterres joined other top United Nations officials today calling for “strong and urgent” action from the international community to help the already-fragile countries avert catastrophe.
