Crippling debt burdens are holding many African countries back: some  of them are paying more on repayments than on health, education and infrastructure.

On today’s show Conor Lennon is joined by Sachin Gaur from the UN News Hindi Unit, to cover the events focused on sustainable development and rethinking the entire international financial architecture. The big question is, how we can make it fairer?

Also, star wattage has been lighting up Headquarters. Edward Norton and Meryl Streep were among the artistic talents at HQ, advocating for the environment and Afghan women.

Music by Joachim Harris, all rights reserved

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• Summit of the Future | UN News
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• FFD4 | Financing for Sustainable Development Office (un.org)
• SDG Lounge | Summit of the future
• Summit of the Future Explainer: The push to connect a digitally divided world and counter AI threats | UN News
• ‘Irrefutable’ need for global regulation of AI: UN experts | UN News
• Summit of the Future Explainer: Time to rethink ‘outdated and ineffective’ international financial architecture | UN News

On the first episode of Focus on the Future, our mini-series running throughout High-Level Week of the UN General Assembly, Conor Lennon and Shanaé Harte explain what the Summit of the Future is all about, how to bring back trust between countries and why UN HQ was full of young people all weekend!

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• UN News Summit of the Future page Summit of the Future | UN News
• Summit of the Future explainer Planning ahead: 5 things to know about the UN’s landmark Summit of the Future | UN News
• Summit of the Future main site Summit of the Future 2024 - United Nations | United Nations
• SDG Lounge SDG Lounge | Summit of the future

Since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, the numbers attending High-Level Week at UN Headquarters in New York have steadily ticked upwards, and this year is set to be a packed event.

If that sounds overwhelming, worry not. UN News is releasing a daily podcast mini-series, designed to make sense of it all.

Each episode of Focus on the Future will have a main topic linked to the focus of the day, and will include highlights from the GA debate, original interviews, and a colourful wrap up of the side events.

The production team welcomes any questions and suggestions: [email protected]

The future of UN peacekeeping and the “new models” it needs to create to remain relevant in the 21st Century are set to be discussed at the landmark Summit of the Future taking place in New York from 22 September.

There are currently 11 UN missions around the world, mainly in Africa and the Middle East.

Their goal is to help countries torn by conflict to create the conditions for lasting peace.

Participants at the Summit of the Future will discuss, the global architecture for international cooperation, which includes peacekeeping.

Cristina Silveiro sat down with the head of UN peacekeeping operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix to take stock of how the UN and its partners can contribute to lasting peace.

Workers with the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, have some of the toughest assignments going in the humanitarian field, helping protect new mothers and babies often born in the midst of intense conflict zones.

For this episode of UN News’s flagship podcast, The Lid is On, two UNFPA representatives reflect on their life-saving work with UN News’ Shanaé Harte. 

They discuss some of the most difficult challenges they've faced while providing insight into what changes can be made to improve women’s rights worldwide.

A Ugandan man, some of whose family and friends were abducted in the East African country, tells the story of his journey from war-torn childhood to becoming the youngest ever African nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Victor Ochen grew up in northern Uganda at a time when the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, was terrorising the region with violent abductions, forced child soldier recruitment, and widespread atrocities against civilians.

For 21 years the focus of his life was survival, struggling to find enough to eat in a variety of internal displacement camps.

To mark International Youth Day, UN News’ Julia Foxen spoke to Mr. Ochen about how his choice of nonviolence at only 13 forever transformed his life, highlighting the immense vulnerability of youth in conflict zones alongside their potential to transform the future of society.

The cultivation of sisal plants by some of the most vulnerable communities in southern Madagascar is helping to tackle desertification and allow people to stay on their land, thanks to a project by the UN Development Programme.

The seasonal Tiomena wind, a fiercely strong wind that blows over the coastline,  has driven sandy soils across productive farmland forcing many people to give up their subsistence farming activities.

But the planting of sisal has helped to reverse the trend as Daniel Dickinson reports for the Lid is On Podcast from southern Madagascar.

Dominica is described as highly disaster-vulnerable: the country is regularly hit by hurricanes and, when the last one swept through in 2017, it caused huge devastation across the island.

The government, led by President Sylvanie Burton, the first woman and the first member of the indigenous Kalinago community to be the country’s Head of State, wants to make Dominica the world’s first ‘climate resilient country’. But, as the climate crisis threatens to lead to increasingly intense and frequent hurricanes, is this feasible?

Conor Lennon from UN News met President Burton and Lorenzo Sanford, the youngest-ever chief of Dominica’s Kalinago community to find out how they plan to achieve their goal.

The vast majority of small island developing States (SIDS) are heavily dependent on polluting, and expensive, fossil fuels for their energy needs: some spend around a quarter of their national budgets on imported fuel. 

However, for Trinidad & Tobago, fossil fuels have been a boon to the economy: the country has exploited its oil and gas reserves for several decades and profited from the wealth. But now, those reserves are running low. Is this the moment for Trinidad & Tobago to kick the fossil fuel habit, and exploit the kinds of renewable resources that are abundant in SIDS?

Conor Lennon from UN News went to the capital, Port of Spain, to put the question to Sheena Gosine, a sustainable energy analyst at Trinidad’s Ministry of Energy; Kishan Kumarsingh, the head of Multilateral Environmental Agreements at the Ministry of Planning and Development; and Curtis Boodoo, lecturer and assistant professor at the University of Trinidad & Tobago, and an expert on the energy transition.

Like many island economies, Dominica experiences high youth unemployment, and recent events, in particular Hurricane Maria and the COVID-19 pandemic, have combined to make the search for work even harder.

A UN-backed initiative designed to improve the employment options for young Dominicans, Work Online Dominica, has been successful in helping them to overcome the barriers they face on a small, remote island.

Conor Lennon from UN News met aspiring photographer Josiah Johnson, a graduate of the programme, in Dominica’s capital, Roseau, to find out how he, and other young people, have benefited from Work Online Dominica.