The UN country teams continue their efforts to provide local and national authorities worldwide support in the fight against COVID-19. Today, we highlight some of those efforts.
Communications is key in our line of work at the United Nations Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG). In addition to uniting 34 agencies, funds and programmes that play a role in development, the UNSDG also supports 131 UN country teams serving 162 countries and territories to work together to enhance the impact of the UN system, bringing together diverse perspectives and capabilities from around the world, while communicating with one unified voice.
During this pandemic, I had the honour of delivering a commencement speech. In preparing for my remarks, I thought about the future young people face today and how I felt at that age, full of energy and aspirations, ready to take on the world.
"Water is everything to me. Nowadays, I really need it, water balances me; I need to observe it and always be in contact with cities near the water. At the same time water mobilizes me, I suffer when I see the pollution. My motivation is to find solutions to this problem that affects everyone," explains Yago.
UN country teams worldwide are continuing the fight against COVID-19 by stepping up efforts to support governments in their response and recovery efforts, including the vaccination efforts via the COVAX Facility.
For the world to respond to international crises, it needs an effective international organization. You’ve probably heard the maxim: If the UN didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.
By the end of 2020, COVID-19 had killed nearly 2 million people and left many millions more with lasting injury. It also led to larger crises in health, jobs, education, domestic violence, migration, and more. That’s a lot of fires to put out. But the United Nations is built to deal with many challenges at once.
In his first major speech of the year, the UN Secretary-General underlined the need for global cooperation to address today’s challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
