UN Interviews

If you were passionate about a cause, would you give up a well-paid job for it – even if it drove your parents mad?

That’s what Ya Wang from Beijing, China, did, and now he’s helping other volunteers to promote youth empowerment through concerts, through the organization, Up With People.

They’re on tour in Switzerland, which is where UN News’s Daniel Johnson caught up with Ya, along with fellow cast member Ahmed Hassan from Aleppo, Syria, who has his own story to tell.

The UN is working in Iraq on many fronts, including assisting the rebuilding of northern areas devastated during the war against ISIL terrorists, says the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator there. Marta Ruedas cites the World Bank and Iraq Government in estimating that reconstruction will cost $88 billion - but just over $1 billion has been received so far. In a recent visit to UN Headquarters, she spoke to Liz Scaffidi, and began by addressing the recent political upheaval across Iraq, which has seen thousands of protesters killed and wounded.

If we told you that greenhouse gas emissions are measured in gigatonnes, how many of them do you think we need to stop producing, if we’re to keep the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with the Paris Agreement?

With unemployment in Gaza standing at 54 per cent, young people there are living “a daily existence in a nightmarish scenario”, according to Jamie McGoldrick, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory.

Mr. McGoldrick spoke to May Yaacoub about challenges facing UNRWA, the UN agency that assists the Palestinian people, which continues to face a staggering $200 million funding shortfall.

It’s widely understood that exercise is good for you, but how much should that be?

In the first global study of its kind into schoolchildren aged 11 to 17 years old, the World Health Organization (WHO) found that four in five of them are not active for even 60 minutes of exercise a day – that’s the minimum recommended amount.

Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are facing a “toxic combination” of escalating violence, displacement, hunger, poverty and climate change, which has driven the whole central Sahel region to the “cusp of disaster”. That’s according to World Food Programme (WFP) spokesperson, Marwa Awad, who was in Burkina Faso just a few days ago, where already this year, civilian deaths are four times the level they were for the whole of 2018, and close to half a million have been displaced.

Around 15 countries are preparing to test a technique that sterilizes male mosquitoes using radiation as part of a global health effort to control diseases such as chikungunya, dengue, and Zika.

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Jeremy Bouyer, a UN pest control expert, explains how the process of using radiation on the bugs works.

Polarization and divisive language could be a major impediment to reaching the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the world needs to prioritize youth education to reach targets by 2030. That’s from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who explains his hand in the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs),  a precursor for today's SDG's.

Cases of Ebola virus are slowing down in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it is still way too soon to say the deadly disease is beaten.

Christian Lindmeier of the World Health Organization (WHO), gave an update on the outbreak to  UN News’s Daniel Johnson, in Geneva.

Not only does torture not work, it’s counterproductive, and when the practice elicits false confessions, societies pay a “very high price.” 

That’s from Professor Juan Méndez, who served at the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2014 to 2016, and experienced torture himself. He spoke to UN News’s Natalie Hutchison in New York.