As head of the police component at the United Nations peacekeeping force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), Satu Koivu says “good competencies and skillset”, regardless of sex, will go far for those with ambitions to pursue police leadership. 

The newly-appointed chief, who joined the Mission in May of this year, tells Esrin Oztoycan how her desire to serve humanity steered her into peacekeeping.

When it started, less than a decade ago, Formula E, the fully electric car racing championship, struggled to be taken seriously by the motorsports industry.

But today, major manufacturers are queuing up to be involved in the series, which is growing in popularity, just like the electric cars it has been designed to promote.

Backed by the UN, Formula E’s success is part of the biggest push ever - from governments, manufacturers, and consumers - to end our reliance on polluting, fossil-fuelled engines.

For this latest Lid Is On podcast, Conor Lennon has been talking to some of the major players involved, to find out what the sport, and the industry, are doing to advancing sustainable development, and fight the climate crisis.

Music credit: Ketsa, Within the Earth

Refugee farmers who grew up cultivating crops in Somalia have returned to the land, albeit in the United States, decades after fleeing their country’s civil war.

They’ve been resettled in the US state of Maine after living for years in UN-supported refugee camps in Kenya.

They are among thousands of Somalis who fled persecution and conflict in the Horn of Africa country who benefitted from resettlement programmes in third countries like the US.

For this latest Lid is On podcast from UN News, Daniel Dickinson reports from Maine.

The unprecedented rise in people requiring humanitarian assistance will continue unless countries collaborate better to combat conflict, climate change and disease, including COVID-19.

That’s the firm belief of the UN’s top aid official, Mark Lowcock, who leaves this week after four years heading its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

He spoke in depth to UN News’s Dianne Penn.

Music credit: Ketsa, ‘Wounds’

Today, women are still in the minority across Vanuatu’s Police Department, but times are changing.

When Sergeant Bianca Simeon joined the Vanuata Police Maritime wing 11 years ago, she was their first woman recruit. Inspector Lili Joel is one of only two women superintendents, and Sera Bula Joseph is one of the rare women police engineers.

In the final episode of Island Voices, a three-part podcast series produced by the UN Office for Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS), Sergeant Simeon and her colleagues describe the challenges they face, and the commitment needed to succeed in the Police Force.

Vanuatu’s national parliament doesn’t have a single woman member, but two activists from different generations are committed to changing the gender politics of the island nation.

In the second episode of Island Voices, a three-part podcast series produced by the UN Office for Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS), law student and activist Georgilla Worwor, and Anthea Arukole, a former political advisor to the Vanuatu Government, discuss their political ambitions.

Critical of the current make-up of the parliament, Ms. Worwor and Ms. Arukole are convinced that bringing more women into politics at a national level will improve leadership and decision-making in the country.

In the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, young women are taking their long boards to the water, refusing to accept the idea that surfing is only for men.

Risma has been surfing since a very young age and, in the face of the challenges that come with being a woman pioneer in a male-dominated sport, she has reached a highly competitive level, and is inspiring a new generation of girls and young women to ride the waves.

”Solwota Sista” is the first episode of Island Voices, a three-part podcast series produced by the UN Office for Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS), which looks at the ways that women in Vanuatu are attempting to break down barriers, participating in areas of island life traditionally reserved for boys and men.

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The role that buildings have to play in climate change rarely gets the same level of attention as issues such as energy production or transport, but they are a significant part of the problem. The UN estimates that, in 2019, emissions from buildings hit an all-time high, accounting for more than a third of all energy-related greenhouse gases.

However, widely available technology, and tried-and-tested building techniques, can drastically cut the amount of energy required to heat and cool buildings – by up to 90 per cent – at a reasonable cost.

In New York, home to UN Headquarters, these techniques are now being put into practice, and older buildings are being “retrofitted” with the latest materials, for the benefit of residents, and the environment.

Conor Lennon went to visit some New York projects that could help the City and State to achieve its strict and ambitious climate goals.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated 76 years ago this week, and to mark Holocaust remembrance day in late January, the corridors of UN Headquarters are normally filled with the stories of survivors who come to bear witness. 

But this year, the annual commemoration programme was held online for the first time ever, due to COVID-19, under the theme “Facing the Aftermath: Recovery and Reconstitution after the Holocaust”.  

For this latest edition of our Lid is On podcast, Ana Carmo brings you some of those voices of survival, along with the poignant contribution of German leader, Angela Merkel, and leading UN officials, speaking out against intolerance and racism, with neo-Nazism seemingly on the rise.  

Music Credits: Cantor Julia Cadrain; and violinist and UNESCO Artist for Peace, Renaud Capuçon performing Nigun from the Baal Shem Suite by Ernest Bloch. Mr. Capuçon is accompanied by the pianist, Guillaume Bellom. 

The death rate through hunger and starvation in World War Two, rivals the number of those killed in combat. By 1945, agriculture had effectively ground to a halt, leaving hundreds of millions to survive on the equivalent of two potatoes a day.  

It was against this desperate backdrop that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was born.  Marking the UN agency’s 75th anniversary, FAO’s Andre Vornic has produced a short podcast series on the founding of the key UN agency. In this first episode, ‘a hungry world rolls up its sleeves’.