Shows
UN InterviewsReturning home to Somalia with grey hair and a desire to give backAn education specialist who left Somalia as a child when the civil war broke out in 1991 has now returned to support the Ministry of Education as they expand national testing. The programme which enabled this specialist, named Shire Salad, to return — Migration for Development in Africa or MIDA — is run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and recruits diaspora experts who have a “personal desire to give back."MIDA then pairs these experts with local professionals who work together to advance the development of hospitals, schools and other institutions. While the diaspora experts ultimately leave, t...
2025-08-1510 min
UN Interviews‘Hell on earth’: Desperation in Haiti as human rights violations aboundPeople in Haiti are living through “hell on earth,” according to William O’Neill, the UN’s designated expert on human rights in Haiti. Armed gangs – predominantly in the capital Port-au-Prince – are parasitically extracting financial resources from the population and perpetrating horrific acts of violence, he says – but they’re just one cog in a larger cycle of impunity, corruption and violence.Following the release of the most recent report on human rights in Haiti, UN News’ Naima Sawaya spoke to Mr. O’Neill about whether a path forward to peace even exists. She began by asking if he had e...
2025-08-1312 min
UN InterviewsFeeding Haiti, a big problem that needs smaller, local solutionsSome 1.3 million people displaced. 5.7 million people not getting enough food. How do you even begin to conceive of the magnitude of Haiti’s crisis, borne from years of political insecurity, gang violence and climate shocks? And how do you begin to feed the country?For Pierre Vauthier, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Representative in Haiti, hope lies in smaller, locally-driven solutions which empower communities to take control of their own food production. A school feeding programme, for example, which instead of financing imported food, uses funds to expand the capacities of local farmers, not only fee...
2025-08-0710 min
UN InterviewsData and slums: ‘Evaluation is the way to speak truth to power’Over one billion people live in slums and informal settlements globally, with that number expected to triple by 2050. And yet, in official data and national censuses, these people are often invisible. Denis Jobin, a senior evaluation officer at UN children’s agency, UNICEF, visited multiple slums across four countries in order to change this, collecting quantitative and qualitative data to illuminate the challenges informal settlements face. UN News’ Naima Sawaya sat down with Mr. Jobin following a side-event at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in New York to better understand the conditions of peo...
2025-07-2409 min
UN Interviews‘It’s a personal fight’: One woman’s battle to protect care work in MexicoWhen Aideé Zamorano González had her second child, her boss and colleagues all asked when she would leave her job in Mexico’s automotive industry. Presumably, now that she had two boys to care for, she would stop working.Ms. Zamorano González didn’t want to quit, but she did leave her job to found Mamá Godín, a social enterprise which evaluates care policies in private sector businesses and advocates for new frameworks to better support mothers in the workplace.UN News’s Naima Sawaya sat down with Ms. Zamorano González a day after...
2025-07-1806 min
UN InterviewsYouth seize the day in new food production reportCollective action can take many forms – cooperatives, for example. But for the millions of youth engaged in agrifood systems, sometimes Instagram or TikTok is more effective.Of the 1.3 billion people aged 15 to 24, 44 per cent rely on agrifood systems for employment. But their unique challenges are not always represented, and their voices are not always heard. This is why collective action is so important. A recent report on youth in agrifood systems went further than just encouraging collective action – it actually consulted youth stakeholders in the editing of the report, as Lauren Phillips, a deputy director at th...
2025-07-1611 min
UN InterviewsReforming the global health system, one bowl of spaghetti at a timeThe current global health system, which has achieved “tremendous” gains over the past decades, is a bit like a bowl of spaghetti, according to Mandeep Dhaliwal, the Director of Health at the UN Development Programme (UNDP).The intertwining noodles of pasta have – in some ways – produced a siloed health system, if you run with the metaphor: separate strands never quite connect.But public health is not a silo, Ms. Dhaliwal told UN News’s Naima Sawaya, ahead of the High-Level Political Forum being held in New York over the next two weeks, which will discuss the world’s c...
2025-07-1411 min
UN InterviewsCooperatives, not guns: How to bring peace to youth in South SudanWhen young South Sudanese have guns, which they do, and are raiding other people’s cattle and produce for their livelihood, which they are, how do you get them to lay down their guns? The answer is an alternative form of income, another livelihood. And the path to income is cooperatives according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).Cooperatives, economic organizations in which work and risk are shared by members, are forming in more and more corners of South Sudan. They are an acknowledgement that it is easier to surmount liveli...
2025-07-0309 min
UN Interviews‘Decent work for the parents’ is key to solving child labourEnsuring that parents have opportunities for “decent work” is essential to reducing the number of young people, currently estimated to be 138 million globally, who are engaged in child labour, according to the UN.The internationally-agreed goal was to end child labour by 2025 and while the number has decreased by 12 million since 2020, millions of children are still working in dangerous or unregulated work places and are being denied the right to an education and a safer, more secure future.The Child Labour report released by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) hi...
2025-06-1109 min
UN InterviewsAward-winning gender advocate lauds importance of ‘gender-responsive peacekeeping missions’Squadron Leader Sharon Mwinsote Syme of Ghana is this year’s UN Military Gender Advocate award winner for her work boosting gender equality while serving with the UN peacekeeping mission in the disputed Abyei region (UNISFA) between neighbouring Sudan and South Sudan. She trained over 1,500 UNISFA personnel on gender-responsive peacekeeping in addition to working closely with local communities, including coordinating a highly effective health campaign to counter child marriage and female genital mutilation. UN News’ Naima Sawaya sat down with Squadron Leader Syme ahead of Thursday’s award presentation.
2025-05-2810 min