Since late August 2017, more than 725,000 mainly-Muslim Rohingya have left Rakhine state, across the border into southern Bangladesh, fleeing widespread and systematic ethnic violence. But they left behind at home a ‘vast land not being cultivated’, with an estimated 70% reduction in agricultural production just in Maungdaw District alone, said the UN Development Programme’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, Haoliang Xu, in a recent interview with UN News.https://www.unhcr.org/
The 2017 Human Development Index covers 189 countries, including 10 Pacific Island States; the largest survey in the region to date. In an interview for UN News, Matthew Johnson-Idan, Development Economist from UNDP Fiji, said the geography of the Pacific was unique, resulting in “some clear special challenges for this region”.
It would be a stretch to describe Jaime Lannister, the character in the hit TV Show Game of Thrones, played by Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, as a positive role model.
If Bilal Bashir, a Palestinian fisherman and lifeguard living on the coast of the Gaza Strip, does not get work over the summer months, he risks being sent to debtors’ prison.
With nearly three-quarters of Timor-Leste’s population under 35-years-old, young people need better education, skills and training to boost development across the Southeast Asian nation.
The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine believes the grinding four-year conflict in the east is being “forgotten” with thousands of ceasefire violations being recorded each month.
Space-based applications and technologies are helping the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to deliver its projects in a faster, more efficient and safer way, according to a senior official there.
