Imagine a world in which practically everyone works in jobs that are helping to transform the global economy, and bring about a world where business can thrive and the needs of the most vulnerable people are met.
Although United Nations Regional Commissions have been in existence for more than 70 years, for the first time ever, each one is currently headed by a woman designated by Secretary-General António Guterres. This accomplishment underscores that, since the day he took office, the UN chief has been determined to achieve gender parity by 2030 as part of the Agenda for Sustainable Development.
A new interactive data tool created by the UN University Centre for Policy Research, which shows a mismatch between where modern slavery occurs, and where governments are spending resources to address it, could help make a positive impact on policy debates surrounding the issue.
It takes around 7,500 litres of water to make a single pair of jeans, equivalent to the amount of water the average person drinks over a period of seven years. That’s just one of the many startling facts to emerge from recent environmental research, which show that the cost of staying fashionable is a lot more than just the price tag.
Fundamentally linked to human development, gender justice requires ending inequality and redressing existing disparities between women and men, according to a high-level United Nations forum on the situation in Arab States.
The older refugee and migrant children get, the less likely it is that they will get a quality education: less than a quarter of the world’s refugees make it to secondary school, and just one per cent progress to higher education. Even for migrants who settle in wealthy, developed host countries, accessing university is an uphill struggle.
The land is sandy, dry and scorched by the searing sun of the African Sahel, but that has not stopped the planting of some 50,000 trees at a camp for Nigerian refugees in the far north-east corner of Cameroon.
A teacher holds up a drawing of an adolescent girl who has just been caught unawares by her first menstruation cycle, while at school. She’s addressing neat rows of young women sitting in class, in the town of Bol, in Chad.
“I think it's almost a joke that it will take the world so long to create women empowerment, particularly as we know that there’s an economic upside in empowering women in the range of $28 trillion.”
After completing a historic 500km journey from the Kenyan island of Lamu to the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar, the world’s first ever traditional “dhow” sailing boat made entirely from recycled plastic, known as the Flipflopi, has successfully raised awareness of the need to overcome one of the world’s biggest environmental challenges: plastic pollution.
