The King Hamad Youth Empowerment Award recognizes young people’s efforts to become effective, productive citizens, who contribute to the welfare of their communities and environment and help advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Looking back on a challenging 2021, the UN Resident Coordinator in Guatemala pays tribute to his colleague and long-time former Resident Coordinator Rebeca Arias Flores, who passed away sadly on the 19th of May after recently retiring from a 30-year career in the UN system.
All over the world women and girls are impacted by the effects of climate change. In Jordan, women are playing a key role in tackling climate related threats in their own communities.
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.
In July 2021, the UN General Assembly highlighted global concerns over “the exponential spread and proliferation of hate speech” around the world and adopted a resolution on “promoting inter-religious and intercultural dialogue and tolerance in countering hate speech”. The resolution recognizes the need to counter discrimination, xenophobia and hate speech and calls on all relevant actors, including States, to increase their efforts to address this phenomenon, in line with international human rights law. The resolution proclaimed 18 June as the International Day for Countering Hate Speech, which will be marked for the first time in 2022.
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.
United Nations Resident Coordinator for Sri Lanka, Ms. Hanaa Singer-Hamdy outlined the urgent funding asks of the Joint Humanitarian Needs and Priorities Plan (HNP Plan) which was launched today in coordination with development and humanitarian partners in Sri Lanka.
In the early 1990s Uzbekistan, the double landlocked country in Central Asia, had just emerged as an independent state from the Soviet Union. With a fragile economy and developing industrial sector, these were challenging times for the newly autonomous country. Dr. Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, remembers this period well, having spent the early days of his career working for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in the Regional Office for Central Asia. In Uzbekistan he witnessed first-hand the challenges in expanding healthcare and other essential services.
In Benin, the financial situation of vulnerable persons further deteriorated with the COVID-19 crisis, which forced many to discontinue their businesses and revealed an urgent need for governments to invest in resilience-building programmes using digital solutions—which help ensure the continuity of local revenue-generating activities.
