UN Catch-Up Dateline Geneva

In this week’s show, the “Jimi Hendrix of the Sahel”, also known to his fans as Vieux Farka Touré, sings his message of peace, in a region on the frontlines of climate change, mass displacement and violent extremism; we also hear the latest stories from the UN News team, covering Afghanistan, COVID-19 and a radical weather forecasting initiative from the World Meteorological Organization. With closing comments too, from regular guest Solange Behoteguy-Cortes. 

In this week’s show, just one in seven COVID cases is detected in Africa while deaths from another deadly disease – tuberculosis – rise for the first time in a decade, the World Health Organization tells us. An update too from Afghanistan, where the UN refugee agency is desperately worried about a lack of funds for lifesaving aid work – and plunging winter temperatures…We’ll also meet the team behind The Walk, an ambitious project to raise awareness about Syrian refugees, which involves walking a huge puppet across Europe.

In this week’s show, a UN-led push to get more COVID vaccines into lots more arms all over the world, Afghanistan reaches a new ‘depth of destitution’ and an alert in northern Mozambique over the indoctrination of children by insurgents. Plus, the latest on the situation inside Syria, from Paolo Pinheiro, chair of the UN-appointed International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which reports to the Human Rights Council. 

In this week’s show, the UN’s top humanitarian official says that famine is likely happening in Ethiopia’s Tigray, while food waste and poor diets continue to handicap millions of children worldwide, the Food and Agriculture Organization says.

We’ll also hear from an Afghan political activist who's speaking up for women's rights after the Taliban takeover, as well as bleak prospects for recovery in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from UN economists UNCTAD...and, a global initiative to tackle meningitis, with the help of the World Health Organization. 

In this week’s show, UN Secretary-General António Guterres talks about Afghanistan and other big problems that require international cooperation to fix them; details from UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet on Myanmar’s continuing spiral of violence, and corruption in South Sudan that’s impacting terribly on the country’s people – although there is a little bit of good news from there too, thanks to a UN mission UNMISS initiative, as we’ll hear.

In this week’s show, an appeal for support for Afghanistan’s people from António Guterres, who also warns that we’re at a “tipping point” for climate action; we also hear from the fifth and final Commission of Inquiry report on Burundi – it’s still talking of crimes against humanity…. And an interview with UN-appointed independent human rights expert Dr Ardi Imseis, on Yemen’s unrelenting conflict and its impact on the country’s most vulnerable people.

In this week’s show, aid to Afghanistan in the international spotlight, a deadly bacterial meningitis alert in northeastern DR Congo, Yemen’s “unbearable” war drags on, and alarming developments in northern Ethiopia, where the “hungry season” has started, as conflict escalates across Tigray’s borders.

In this week's show, an appeal for Afghanistan’s neighbours to keep their borders open after the Taliban takeover; an interview with a migration expert from UN Children’s Fund UNICEF, on the Afghan boys and girls risking everything to flee the country, and an alert over far-too-low COVID-19 vaccination rates across Africa.

In today’s show, urgent humanitarian needs in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, the devastating aftermath in quake-hit Haiti, and how the UN health agency is helping to snub out potentially deadly Marburg virus in Guinea, with insight from World Health Organization’s representative in the country Dr. Georges Ki-Zerbo.

In this week's show, efforts to reassure thousands of children traumatised by fighting in Tigray, Ethiopia; the UN health agency WHO announces new drug trials to fight COVID, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) investigates a potential heat spike in Sicily, and unsettling updates from Afghanistan amid the lightning Taliban advance. Plus, a sneak preview of our new UN climate action podcast, No Denying It.