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Health workers across Benin are dealing with the current outbreak of Lassa fever, while UN agencies are responding with outreach and treatment. Luckily there is an innovative new mechanism available to everyone involved: you can communicate directly with the UN, no matter who you are.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development builds on Millennium Development Goal (MDG) priorities while setting the world’s sights on emerging health and development challenges. Tobacco control is among the greatest of these, as tobacco use is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory illness – the four main non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that now account for the bulk of illness and deaths globally.

The UN has been in Haiti a long time. The most recent iteration of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) arrived 11 years ago. And it has been ‘shall we stay or shall we go’, for some years now. Maybe 2016 is the year where, finally, the decision to wrap up a full peace keeping mission does happen. For real. And for many, Haitians and UN colleagues alike, it is about time.

Do your new year’s resolutions include taking joint programming online in 2016?? We in Mozambique are moving in this direction. Working together with a team at HQ and Tanzania country office, we are on our way to fulfilling an aspiration of ours– to have an online United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF).

While many of us in the UN see 2015 as a triumphant year for multilateralism, there are those who hold lingering doubts about the agreement on Agenda 2030, an ambitious set of goals that establishes milestones of growth & equality within the limits of the planet.  Many say they are too ambitious – 169 commandments according to the Economist and A free for all according to the New York Times.