UN Interviews

UN military observers oversee the ceasefires between Israel and Syria as well as Lebanon, in a preventative effort to head off isolated incidents that could escalate into another all-out war in the febrile region.

The original observer mission mandated in 1948 is known as the UN Truce Supervision Organization, or UNTSO, which also advises the other UN peacekeeping forces in the Middle East: the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in Syria and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

Major General Patrick Gauchat, Head of UNTSO, told UN News that it is necessary to have “everyone working on guaranteeing the temporary becomes long-term”.

Operating in a buffer zone between Israel and its two neighbours, Major General Gauchat explained in an interview with Nathalie Minard that the situation in the region continues to be complex and challenging.

Underlying the importance of a collective responsibility to support all those impacted by seismic events in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and beyond – stemming from the war between Israel and Hamas – the head of the UN Office for Project Services, has told UN News this is a “defining moment for the Middle East”.

Calling on all UN agencies to scale up and the international community to mobilize, Jorge Moreira da Silva added that it is fundamental to “bring all humanitarian aid that is needed”.

As Executive Director of the UN agency which literally builds better lives for millions around the world, Mr. Moreira da Silva is on a week-long evaluation mission in the Middle East, including visits to Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

He spoke to UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki from Syria and started by telling him about his team’s crucial role. 

Globally, 122 million girls are out of school, according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).  Of those, 2.5 million are banned from education in Afghanistan.

Somaya Faruqi, former captain of the Afghan Girls Robotics Team – known as the Afghan Dreamers – and now an Education Cannot Wait Global Champion, gained international recognition for her engineering achievements before being forced to flee her homeland when the Taliban took power in 2021.

Ahead of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, she spoke with UN News’s Pia Blondel about the stark reality of studying engineering in the United States while many of her peers back home have been forced into marriage and denied an education. 

Combatants for Peace, a grassroots organization made up of Palestinian and Israeli peace advocates, has consistently called for dialogue between the two communities for two decades, even during the brutal months of the Gaza war.

Mai Shahin, a Palestinian therapist and Elik Elhanan, a teacher in New York both, at one time, took part in acts of violence. On a visit to UN Headquarters in New York in late January, they told Conor Lennon from UN News that the recent conflict has intensified their belief that communication is the only way to achieve peace.

If the international community is able to effectively put in place the ethical and practical guidelines proposed by UNESCO and others, AI has the potential to be an extremely important part of an educator’s toolkit. But the introduction of this technology is just one part of a much wider philosophical discussion about the effectiveness of education in general in a world that many believe is about to upended by increasingly powerful AI-powered applications.

Conor Lennon from UN News asked Matthew Rascoff, Vice Provost for Digital Education at Stanford University, to give his take on the role of education in today’s world, after a keynote speech on AI and education delivered at UNHQ in late January 2025.

Depriving any person caught up in fighting of their basic human dignity, is nothing less than a “moral failure” on the part of the international community.

That’s the view of the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric, whose neutral, impartial and independent aid teams – among many other things – support those trapped in conflict through no fault of their own.

UN News’s Liudmila Blagonravova spoke to Ms. Spoljaric at UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday, after she addressed the UN General Assembly on the issue, making a call for international law to be made an urgent political priority.

With new Israeli legislation coming into effect on Thursday outlawing Palestine refugee agency, UNRWA, international staff have already been forced to leave the agency’s headquarters in East Jerusalem for Jordan, after their visas were cut short.

The UN is bracing for the “nightmare scenario” which would mean a halt to all operations – a major blow to “all the people it serves” in the region, UNRWA spokesperson Jonathan Fowler told UN News’s Ezzat El-Ferri from Amman, Jordan.

The move represents another blow to multilateralism worldwide, he said.

In the first week of the ceasefire, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been able to reach more than 330,000 people with food assistance in Gaza.

With so many now on the move, WFP’s priority is to ensure assistance follows the people.

Programme Director of Emergencies, Samer Abdel Jaber, told UN News’s Nancy Sarkis that their work is “needed more than ever” across the whole Middle East, with crises continuing in Lebanon and Syria, where millions are still going hungry.

Long before the United States entered the Second World War in December 1941, American aid workers were fanning out across territory occupied by the Axis powers, attempting to help Jews escape, as their grip tightened.

A new book on their work underlines the chaos of the time, and the difficult decisions they had to make, knowing that for every person they saved, many more would be killed.

Saints and Liars, by Debórah Dwork, the Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the City University of New York Graduate Center, tells the stories of rescue workers in five key cities as the situation on the ground grew increasingly dire.

At the launch ahead of the  International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust marked annually on 27 January, Tracey Petersen, the manager of the UN Holocaust Education Outreach Programme, interviewed Debórah Dwork at UN Headquarters, and began by asking her about the book’s title.

The situation in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is becoming increasingly unsafe for both civilians and aid teams, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, warned on Friday, amid threats by the M23 rebel group that its fighters are about to attack Goma, the regional capital of North Kivu.

According to the agency, some 400,000 people have been uprooted by violence in North and South Kivu since the beginning of the year alone because of intensifying violence and clashes between the M23 rebels, the Congolese Armed Forces and other armed groups.

In an exclusive interview with UN News’s Alpha Diallo, UNHCR’s chief of office in Goma, Abdoulaye Barry, told us what conditions were like in the key city that’s home to two million people.