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As part of this year’s commemoration of World Humanitarian Day (WHD), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs launched a photography exhibition in New York entitled “When I Grow Up.” By photographing African children aged six to 18 – whose young lives have already been beleaguered with hardships – photographer Vincent Tremeau documented their aspirations by capturing each dressed in the clothing of the adult they aspire to be.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Patricia Espinosa as the new Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in May this year. Ms. Espinosa recently spoke with UN News about her work and the challenges ahead.

Following five months of negotiations, United Nations Member States agreed on 2 August by consensus upon a political declaration that will serve as the basis for discussions and the outcome of the first-ever UN Summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants which will be held, on 19 September, at UN Headquarters in New York.

“In the talk about peacebuilding and reconciliation, we sometimes forget that it’s about how local communities come back together,” said the United Nations Assistant-Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support, Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, discussing the UN’s Peacebuilding Fund – which supports millions of people in 27 countries.

In conflicts, the United Nations is commonly associated with peacekeeping and UN ‘blue helmets,’ but increasingly the international community’s focus is on “peacebuilding” – the idea of supporting a country throughout all stages of a conflict, including post-conflict recovery and socio-economic development, and on preventing the outbreak of fighting.

The United Nations has a “zero tolerance” policy towards sexual abuse by anyone working under the blue flag. The matter is one of such weight for the Organization that earlier this year, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Jane Holl Lute as the Special Coordinator on improving the UN response to sexual exploitation and abuse.

A rapid response mechanism is crucial to tackling an endemic disease such as cholera and eliminating it in Haiti, the deputy head of the UN mission there said today, emphasizing that the effectiveness of such efforts requires predictable financing.

Ahead of next week’s United Nations High-Level Political Forum, Assistant Secretary-General Thomas Gass talks about sustainable development, leaving no one behind, and why this time “it’s for real”.

The international community must increase its commitment to fighting Afrophobia and discrimination against people of African descent, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador and actor Danny Glover has said, speaking during the International Decade for People of African Descent.

The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations peace operation in Mali and increased its strength to more than 15,000 peacekeepers. The decision followed a request from the UN envoy in Mali to boost support for the peacekeeping mission.