UN Interviews

Saying nowhere is safe in Gaza is not a cliché, according to UNICEF’s James Elder, speaking to UN News from Rafah in southern Gaza.

“That’s the message we keep trying to share”, he told Reem Abaza, just hours after the pause in fighting ended between Israel and Palestinian militants.

The UN children’s agency official said leaders’ enabling fighting to resume simply means the death of more and more children, noting that the only aid route at Rafah, is closed once more.

Saying nowhere is safe in Gaza is not a cliché, according to UNICEF’s James Elder, speaking to UN News from Rafah in southern Gaza.

“That’s the message we keep trying to share”, he told Reem Abaza, just hours after the pause in fighting ended between Israel and Palestinian militants.

The UN children’s agency official said leaders’ enabling fighting to resume, simply means the death of more and more children, noting that the only aid route at Rafah is closed once more.

2023 is on track to be the hottest year ever and the last 10 years have proven to be the warmest decade so far. These are worrying trends that suggest increasing floods, wildfires, glacier melt and heatwaves, lie immediately ahead.This is the warning issued by Petteri Taalas, World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General, who spoke to UN News in Dubai, ahead of the launch of the agency’s provisional State of the Global Climate report on the opening day of COP28.He told Sachin Gaur that the average temperature for the year has now increased to 1.4 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times – very close to the 1.5 degrees target limit as laid out by the Paris climate agreement in 2015.

When it comes to mitigating loss and damage caused by climate change, the global response is often failing to keep pace, according to Gernot Laganda of the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

“We have had decades now where the temperature curve has really kept climbing, while adaptation financing was often too little, too late,” said the senior official.

For many years, WFP has been using multiple tools to tackle the issue of hunger caused by weather extremes. One of those is climate risk insurance, which has helped millions of smallholder farmers get back on their feet after disaster struck. 

Mr. Laganda, the WFP’s Director of Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction, told UN News’s Anton Uspensky it was an issue that should be on the agenda in Dubai as COP28 gets underway.

Despite intense national efforts geared towards eliminating AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, the Deputy Executive Director for the UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Angeli Achrekar, says that so far, the “job isn't done.” 

Ms. Achrekar, spoke with Pauline Batista from UN News as UNAIDS launched its latest report on Tuesday, Let Communities Lead. 

It suggests the world can still end AIDS by the ambitious deadline, but only if communities on the frontlines get the full support they need from governments and donors.

Just one book can turn a displaced child’s life around and help unite the world, said the newly minted winner of the UN refugee agency’s (UNHCR) annual Nansen award on Tuesday.

Somali-born Abdullahi Mire, who sought refuge with his mother at the vast Dadaab refugee complex in northern Kenya in the 1990s, told UN News the prize money was “a milestone for us” that would benefit kids in the camp by expanding bookshelves and boosting internet connectivity.

The education advocate who founded the Refugee Youth Education Hub at Dadaab, told Thelma Mwadzaya he was dedicating the award to all the displaced children and volunteers who are determined to help turn lives around, one book at a time.

A child in hospital who’s lost his mother and sisters but doesn’t know they’re dead; another who dare not close his eyes in case he forgets what his dead parents look like – just some of the tragic testimony relayed to Spokesperson James Elder of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the past few days while in Gaza.

He spoke to UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki, who began by asking what the situation was like on the ground there for children, as a fragile ceasefire holds amid the release of hostages.

The climate crisis is also a health crisis. This is the message the UN health agency will deliver to world leaders and negotiators gathering at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP28, in Dubai. The WHO says, the same pollution that impacts the climate also affects our lungs, and extreme weather events lead to a large range of diseases. 

UN News’ Nathalie Minard spoke with Dr. Maria Neira, Director of the Department of Public Health and Environment at the World Health Organization (WHO), ahead of COP28. 

The UN General Assembly last month passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas – the first collective call to action to come out of the UN since the start of the conflict on 7 October.

The General Assembly comprises all 193 UN Member States and although its resolutions are non-binding, they represent “the conscience of humanity”.

That’s the message from General Assembly President Dennis Francis, who also encourages people who believe the UN is ineffective to instead engage with the global body.

UN News’s Dianne Penn asked Mr. Francis how he is ensuring that countries will work together to address his priority areas of peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability. 

Negotiations continued on Thursday towards the implementation of the Israel-Hamas truce in Gaza, where staff from the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, remain “on the ground doing an impossible mission”.

That’s according to Maha Hijazi, UNRWA Warehousing and Distribution Officer, who was responsible for securing food for hundreds of thousands of people in the enclave, which continues to face dire shortages of food, water fuel and medicines. 

Ms. Hijazi and her family fled to Egypt on Monday.  She spoke to UN News’s Nancy Sarkis about what life was like in Gaza, where during the day she worked to support thousands sheltered in UNRWA facilities while at night she would comfort her children so they could fall asleep amid the sound of bombardment.