Teams are intensifying their efforts across the globe to tackle COVID-19 and the latest variant: Omicron. They are also helping countries as they face multidimensional challenges like an increase in gender-based violence and political unrest.
Children returning to schools, workplaces re-opening, and vaccines all seemed to point to a return to normal but like 2020, 2021 has been a year of hope, loss, and uncertainty for people around the world. Stories of innovative ways to connect, protect our planet from climate change, and ways we, as a society, have joined forces to protect each other from the pandemic that has ravaged all our lives.
“Persons with disabilities are capable and equal. It is time the world understands that,” says Antonio Palma, a UN Volunteer at the Resident Coordinator’s Office in Guatemala.
The United Nations Country Teams from Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina recently completed a ten-day mission by visiting several communities in the largest dry forest in the world and the second-largest forest biome in South America: the Gran Chaco, which extends over an area of over 1,14 million square kilometres, distributed in central and northern Argentina, southeastern Bolivia and western Paraguay.
Hunger rose more sharply than in any other region between 2019 and 2020, reaching 59,7 million people, its highest point since 2000. Food insecurity affects 267 million people and 106 million adults present obesity.
Maman Sylvie, who lives in Brazzaville (Republic of Congo), believes that being diagnosed as HIV positive should not be the equivalent of a death sentence, and has dedicated her life to helping people with HIV in the Republic of Congo.
UN teams are tirelessly working with authorities and partners to respond to the ongoing pandemic and other multifaceted challenges across the globe. Today, we highlight some of the coordinated efforts.
Young workers have limited job and career prospects. The causes are many. Years of conflict and instability. A private sector that is in its infancy. Lack of economic diversification. Prolonged underinvestment. These factors affect the whole population, but young people most of all.
SG, António Guterres is headed to Colombia this week to mark the fifth anniversary of the signing of the peace accords that ended 50 years of conflict in the country, and his activities will include travel to the village of Llano Grande, where the townspeople and former combatants are working together to secure a better future.
The children of families who were affected by the massive earthquake which devastated large parts of south-west Haiti in August this year are receiving free hot meals at school as part of an initiative by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to support the recovery of the country’s most vulnerable communities.
