UN Interviews

A “continued flow” of Venezuelans out of their country is to be expected, UN humanitarians said on Friday, highlighting the many risks faced by families on the move, such as begging, child labour and even so-called survival sex.  In an interview with UN News’s Samuel Mungai, UN refugee agency spokesperson Liz Throssell, explains that one in two families have encountered problems on their perilous journeys.

An Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has already killed more than 1,700 people since last August, but communities there are more worried about measles and basic services, says the World Health Organization (WHO). In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Dr. Margaret Harris explains how the added focus on DRC since the outbreak was declared an international emergency earlier this week, could be an opportunity to do much more to help people in the longer term.

Professor Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana  Executive Secretary of ESCAP) has warned that her region is set to miss all of the 17 SDGs which underpin the 2030 Agenda.

Ms. Alisjahbana was speaking to Conor Lennon from UN News in New York, and she began by outlining the message that she wants to get across during her time at UN Headquarters.

Discriminatory laws cast “long shadows” of exclusion, subordination and social stigma, and we must commit to breaking down the barriers these laws can create, to embrace “inclusivity”.  That’s according to Justice Edwin Cameron, appointed by Nelson Mandela as the first openly gay Judge on South Africa’s Constitutional Court, and widely seen as a hero for his fight to end all forms of inequality and exclusion.

With Sudan so much at the centre of the whole “volatile” Horn of Africa region, its political fate will have major “implications for a number of other quite vulnerable” neighbouring countries, according to the UN’s Special Adviser on the country. Nicholas Haysom, was recently in New York, and in an interview with UN News, spoke about how “resolving the Sudanese crisis would generate stability” for the entire region. 

The newly launched "State of Food Security and Nutrition" report gives an updated estimate of the number of hungry people in the world. It also provides the latest data on child stunting and wasting as well as on adult and child obesity. Gilbert Houngbo, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) spoke to Jérôme Longué of UN News, before the launch.

The UN is leading efforts to tackle a measles epidemic in DRC, despite ongoing violence, and the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak on record.

Jerome Pfaffman from UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, describes how the agency is ramping up support to those in need.

Groundbreaking cancer treatments and medicines used to help mothers who’ve just given birth, are just two of the essential health products that all countries around the world should be providing, UN experts said on Tuesday.

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Dr Nicola Magrini from the World Health Organization explains how several newly-available medicines could transform people’s lives in rich and poor countries, thanks to their innovative qualities.

Two thousand four hundred billion dollars: that’s the expected cost of heat stress to the global economy every year from 2030, and it’s a conservative estimate, UN work experts said on Monday. In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Catherine Saget, from the International Labour Organization, warns that developing West African States are likely to be worst-hit, as they’re facing a five per cent drop in working hours by the end of the next decade, caused by rising temperatures.

Back in 1976 Linda Tyson came out as “a lesbian and a feminist”, she told UN News on the sidelines of the 2019 New York City LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] Pride March on Fifth Avenue, long before the UN-GLOBE joined the World Pride parade.

Pointing out that it was the same year the United States commemorated its bicentennial, she acknowledged that while the world’s consciousness was not very raised at that time, her experience was “so freeing”.