Following the political instability and clashes which broke out in the small landlocked country of Burundi in East Africa in 2015, hundreds of thousands of people fled to nearby countries in search of safety and security.
Droughts have become an urgent global issue. Aggravated by human-induced climate change and desertification, they threaten all types of countries, negatively impacting food security and socioeconomic development. And prospects are not reassuring as droughts may affect over three-quarters of the world’s population by 2050.
Originally constructed in 1976 as a supertanker and converted into a floating storage and offloading facility a decade later, the vessel holds an estimated 1.14 million barrels of light crude oil. Maintenance operations were suspended on the tanker in 2015 as the civil war escalated.
At the beginning of the year, the Government of Indonesia announced that it had administered more than 280 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. With over 79.6 per cent of the national population receiving at least one dose and 54.8 per cent fully vaccinated, Indonesia celebrated achieving its national vaccination target by the end of 2021.
Our UN teams are on the ground, working with governments and key stakeholders to bolster countries’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, helping ensure a smooth recovery. They tackle a range of multi-faceted priorities and key initiatives on a daily basis—from climate action to gender equality and food security—and utilize innovative approaches to problem-solving to better serve communities. Below are some highlights of their work this month.
The celebration to mark the thirty-year anniversary of Bosnia and Herzegovina's accession to the United Nations began last week with a formal programme at the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo and continued with the second edition of the UN's #ImagineChange Festival at the Square of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Trg BiH).
“The weather here’s a lot drier for longer these days,” says Althea Spencer, the treasurer of the Mount Airy Farmers group, which is based in Northern Clarendon. “If you don’t have water, it makes no sense to plant seeds because they will just die.”