In this week’s 15-minute podcast, we enter the murky world of so-called intelligent drone strike technology and concerns about their proliferation in an interview with the UN Institute for Disarmament Research. Also, an alert over Africa’s third COVID wave, a new UN report likening drought to a new pandemic and a warning over the plight of millions of domestic workers, from the UN labour agency ILO. Also, we’ll have closing comments from regular guest, Solange Behoteguy Cortes.
Whilst the global economy has taken a battering during the COVID-19 pandemic, online commerce has thrived. A UN-supported initiative is helping refugees and migrants around the world to access the tools and customers they need to build their businesses and improve their livelihoods.
Without harnessing the energy, tech savvy and optimism of young people, the world has no hope of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or the Paris Agreement on climate change, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday.
An independent UN human rights expert is calling for greater scrutiny of emerging digital technologies which she said are being used to uphold racial inequality, discrimination and intolerance.
The internet and new digital tools are being manipulated as never before to infringe on people’s right to free assembly, the UN’s top rights official said on Thursday, in a call for a moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology during peaceful demonstrations.
Shifting balances of power are triggering “new and dangerous risks”, the UN chief told the Italian Senate in Rome on Wednesday, pointing to the need for more coordinated international responses, focused on solutions.
A recap of Thurday's main stories: Wireless technology could block life-saving weather forecasts; UN gears up for 75th birthday dialogue; polio close to eradication; UN steps up northeast Syria aid; "unique opportunity" for end to Sudan-South Sudan border disputes.
Amid growing competition for radio wave space due to new wireless technologies, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Thursday called on governments to protect radio frequencies allocated to potentially life-saving weather forecasting services.
