Rising insecurity, including the proliferation of terrorist and other non-State armed groups, coupled with political instability, is creating a crisis in the Sahel that poses a “global threat”, the UN chief warned Thursday’s high level meeting on the vast African region, which took place behind closed doors at UN Headquarters in New York.
The Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique has been plagued by insecurity since 2017, but this year has seen “multiple crises” impact the population there, after militant extremists overran the area around Pemba, killing dozens and displacing a third of the population.
Nearly 700,000 people are displaced, 46% of them children.
Ambassadors, senior UN officials, representatives of global sports organizations, and managers of some of the world’s top athletes met virtually on Friday to underline the role that sport can play in combating violent extremism and radicalization.
The Secretary-General strongly condemned “heinous attacks” against civilians in the Lake Chad Basin, a UN spokesperson said on Monday.
The UN Security Council on Wednesday called for greater international support to African countries in their continued fight against terrorism and violent extremism, particularly in parts of the Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin region and the Horn of Africa.
With one in four of the world’s 1.2 billion youth affected by some sort of violence or armed conflict, the United Nations on Tuesday launched a project to support new, youth-driven initiatives in education, science, culture and the media to prevent violent extremism in Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia
Young people could be the “disruptive solution” to tackling the global challenge of violent extremism.
That’s the view of the Youth Minister in the United Arab Emirates, Shamma Suhail Faris Al Mazrui.
Appointed last year when she was just 22, she’s believed to be the youngest government minister in the world.
Ms Mazrui was in New York this month for the start of the latest session of the UN General Assembly
She spoke to Basma Baghal about UAE initiatives geared towards youth, who now top more than one million globally.
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The practice of enforced disappearance is not decreasing, it’s “morphing”, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein made the remarks in a video message to a High-Level plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly, where he warned about “new and alarming patterns” that are emerging in the context of migration, internal conflict and violent extremism.
The risk of violent extremism and terrorism can be reduced by guaranteeing social and human rights as well as access to opportunities and employment.
That’s according to the man who heads a UN initiative which promotes mutual respect among people from different cultural and religious backgrounds.
Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, High Representative for the UN Alliance of Civilizations was speaking during the opening ceremony of its 7th Global Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Tuesday.
The growing threat of terrorism around the world requires unified action to tackle its root causes.
That’s according to the senior official coordinating counter-terrorism policy at the UN, speaking exclusively to UN Radio.
Jehangir Khan was speaking ahead of the Secretary-General unveiling his Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism, on Friday.
Mr Khan is the director of both the Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF) and the Counter-Terrorism Centre.