UN Interviews

Amid reports of massacres in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola-hit Ituri province, World Health Organization workers continue to risk their lives to prevent the disease from spreading deeper into rural areas. In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Dr. Ibrahima Soce Fall, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Emergency Response explains how the agency operates in this dangerous region.

Peace between government and opposition forces in South Sudan “hangs in the balance,” but there is an overwhelming desire from people in the eastern African country for an end to the five-year long conflict there; that’s according to David Shearer, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for South Sudan. Speaking to UN News in New York, Mr. Shearer said that it was up to the country’s leaders to ensure the people’s desire for peace is fulfilled. Daniel Dickinson spoke to Mr. Shearer and began by asking him for the latest on the revitalized peace deal which was agreed late last year.

Every month, the UN rescues around 1,200 people from the vast Sahara Desert, near Niger, many after they’ve been abandoned by traffickers who promised to take them to Libya, Nigeria or Morocco. In an interview with Daniel Johnson from UN News, Joel Millman from the UN migration agency, IOM, says that without its help, “virtually all of them” would perish.

With hundreds killed and more than 30,000 injured so far during the Gaza-Israel border protests, known as “The Great March of Return”, many Palestinians are now facing a future of life-long disability, unable to get the treatment they need.  Referring to the “devastating impacts in human terms”, Matthias Schmale, director of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has warned in an interview with UN News, that local hospitals do not have the capacity to deal with the most serious health cases.