UN Interviews

Drug dealers aren’t afraid of using popular social media and e-commerce platforms to sell their narcotics which is why countries and internet giants should join forces to fight the disinformation they peddle, a UN-partnered International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) report said on Tuesday. 

In an interview with UN News’s Khaled Mohamed, the board’s President, Professor Jallal Toufiq, describes the nature of the online drug threat and offers insight into how to counteract it. He also explains how natural disasters and emergencies linked to climate change and conflict have fuelled demand for medicines containing controlled substances.

Roughly two million homes have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine, where the full-scale Russian invasion has entered a third year.

A recent UN-backed assessment estimated that overall reconstruction and recovery will cost $486 billion over the next decade. 

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) is working with the authorities and civil society on recovery efforts, which includes supporting a project called Velyke Divnytsvo that encourages women to take up tools and rebuild their country, one house at a time. 

UN News’s Liudmila Blagonravova spoke to UNDP’s Resident Representative in Ukraine Jaco Cilliers.  She began by asking him about the immense challenge of building back from war. 

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees – UNRWA - is a lifeline for Gazans and should have the continued support of donor nations, the President of the United Nations General Assembly has insisted.

In a wide-ranging interview, Dennis Francis insisted that investigations into allegations of collusion between UNRWA and Hamas militants were ongoing; and that until these findings are made public, the UN must not be seen to be “walking away” from Gazans.

Here’s Mr. Francis now, speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson in Geneva, who started by asking him how he responded to criticism that the United Nations was unable to find solutions to growing global crises, from Ukraine to climate change.

Independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council are calling for an investigation into credible allegations of continued violations against Palestinian women and girls in Gaza and the West Bank against the backdrop of the current war between Hamas and Israel.

Reports allege that Palestinian women and children have been arbitrarily executed in Gaza, including when seeking refuge or fleeing bombardment, while hundreds more have been arbitrarily detained.

Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, is among the five experts that issued the appeal.

They are part of the Council’s Special Procedures - the largest body of independent experts in the UN human rights system – and are not UN staff.

UN News’s Reem Abaza asked Ms. Alsalem about their concerns. 

Climate change has become such a major factor of global instability that even the UN Security Council has added it to its agenda. 

At the UN Environment Assembly taking place in Nairobi this week, experts including Christophe Hodder, climate peace and security advisor to UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM), have been meeting to discuss the complex link between climate change and conflicts. 

Mr. Hodder highlighted the environmental damage caused by war and its consequences, explaining to UN News' Anton Uspensky the vicious circle that is created by conflict and a warming planet as it “affects ecosystems, human health and climate”. 

An all-out Israeli invasion of Rafah could force the closure of the aid lifeline from Rafah, “but we will never leave the people of Gaza”, UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths said on Tuesday.

His expression of solidarity with Gazans came amid deepening concerns among humanitarians and the international community about the fate of some 1.5 million civilians uprooted by more than four months of heavy Israeli bombardment in the enclave, sparked by Hamas-led attacks in Israel on 7 October.

Mr. Griffiths reiterated that it was an “illusion” to say that anywhere was safe in Gaza, but that UN aid teams and their partners would do their utmost to help displaced civilians, wherever they decided to seek shelter.

“We are completely attached to their survival,” he told UN News’s Daniel Johnson

Radio Miraya has been broadcasting across South Sudan since 2006 and in that time its core message of peace hasn’t changed – and it must be a successful formula, since seven in 10 people in the country listen to it.

For World Radio Day, celebrated on 13 February every year, we caught up with Ben Dotsei Malor who’s just returned to UN Headquarters in New York from a posting to Juba, where Radio Miraya is based.

Here he is now, sharing his thoughts on his time there, with UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

Sharing borders with Gaza, Israel, Libya and Sudan, Egypt has taken a lead role in providing lifesaving aid in the region. Since the outbreak of conflict in Sudan last April and the four-month-old war in Gaza, both the Government and the Egyptian Red Crescent Society have been key actors in helping to assist millions of civilians caught in the crossfire.

The sheer volume of aid delivered to Gaza has led Egypt to introduce innovations and strategies to get emergency supplies and services to almost two million Palestinians stuck in the enclave, which faces near constant Israeli bombardment alongside ongoing ground operations.

UN News’s Khaled Haridy Mohamed talked with Elena Panova, UN Resident Coordinator in Egypt, and Neveen Alqabbaj, Egypt’s Minister of Social Solidarity Society and vice-president of the Egyptian Red Crescent Society, about how aid is delivered in times of crisis.

Nearly half of the world’s migratory species are in decline and the global extinction risk is increasing, a new UN report has revealed. 

Some whale species, sea turtles and jaguars are among the animals at risk, according to the first-ever State of the World’s Migratory Species report, launched at the opening of a major UN wildlife conservation conference taking place this week in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. 

The report was issued by Secretariat of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), a UN biodiversity treaty. 

For more on the findings, UN News’s Anton Uspensky spoke to Amy Fraenkel, the CMS Executive Secretary, who began by providing the background to the treaty.

As war rages in Gaza, another simmering conflict risks escalating on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon – which is why the UN peacekeeping mission there is so important.

UNIFIL – the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon – has three important responsibilities: helping civilians affected by the war, protecting the so-called “Blue Line” that separates both countries and maintaining a channel of communication between them.

The task isn’t easy though, amid daily exchanges of fire that have uprooted an estimated 86,000 people in southern Lebanon since 7 October and left three UN “blue helmets” injured and their base damaged. 

For the latest on how UNIFIL’s peacekeepers are working to prevent violence from spreading, UN News’s Nancy Sarkis sat down with Andrea Tenenti, UNIFIL Spokesperson and Chief of Strategic Communications and Public Information (SCPI).