UN Interviews

Aniket Kadam is an android developer at a tech company called 100ms in India. After being one of the panelists at the pre-recorded UN event to commemorate World Autism Awareness Day, on 2 April, on the subject of work within the global theme "Transformation: Toward a Neuro-Inclusive World for All", UN News asked him to share his experiences living with autism alongside a message on the occasion of the international day.

A timetable for the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to fully withdraw, has yet to be agreed with the Government there, but constructive negotiations are continuing, MONUSCO chief Bintou Keita has told UN News, in an in-depth interview.

The UN mission’s core mandate is protection of civilians, but in many places of the partially militia-controlled east, there’s simply no authority which can keep people safe, if MONUSCO pulls out.

And when it comes to fighting deadly misinformation, Ms. Keita said it has been a “painful curve”, but the mission has now become proactive on social and other media platforms, to help stop its spread.

Jerome Bernard, of our UN News French service, began by asking her what the minimum conditions would be for MONUSCO to responsibly draw down, and leave DRC.

The illegal cocaine trade has bounced back following COVID-19 lockdowns, with coca cultivation up by more than a third from 2020 to 2021, according to a new report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Speaking to UN News, UNODC’s chief analyst for the Global Report on Cocaine 2023, said new routes and networks had emerged, with global supply now at record levels.

Brazil has emerged as a major hub, and there’s concern demand is rising fast in West Africa and Asia, as Ms. Me told Pauline Batista.

As if the situation wasn’t bad enough for people facing starvation in the Greater Horn of Africa region, now UN humanitarians have warned that they’re in the grip of surging disease, linked to malnutrition.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda, have been particularly affected.

All seven countries are battling measles outbreaks, four have reported cholera outbreaks and malaria is a serious threat in Sudan.

With more on the human impact of this ongoing emergency, here’s Liesbeth Aelbrecht, WHO Incident Manager, talking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

As South Sudan prepares for elections in 2024, the world’s youngest nation sits at a fork in the road.

Progress towards a lasting peace include the need to hold fair elections, open civic spaces, and improved security. It also means having an inclusive constitution built for all.

But, right now, stark choices must be made, and 2023 is a “make or break” year, as Nicholas Haysom, who heads the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), tells UN News’s Eileen Travers.

Survivors of decades of conflict in the Horn of Africa have told the UN how hunger and drought have finally uprooted them from their homes.

To help 3.3 million people who’ve been displaced in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, issued an urgent appeal this week for $137 million.

And although famine was narrowly prevented last year, the humanitarian outlook for 2023 is extremely uncertain, as the agency’s Olga Sarrado tells UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

One year since Russia invaded Ukraine, UN food security experts are more concerned than ever about the global cost of living crisis that the war has fuelled. 

In 2023, they’ve warned that the conflict could leave many developing countries – and particularly in Africa - facing potentially dire shortages of the essential foodstuffs that they used to import from the Black Sea neighbours.  

With more on how the international community is coming together to tackle this affordability crunch, here’s Beth Bechdol, Deputy Director General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), with UN Geneva’s Michele Zaccheo. 

This Friday will mark a year since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

For the World Health Organization (WHO), providing humanitarian support is the key priority during conflicts and other crises, said Dr. Jarno Habicht, the agency’s representative in the country. 

Ahead of the grim anniversary, he spoke to UN News’s Andrei Muchnik about WHO’s ongoing operations amid missile and drone attacks, and how many local colleagues “have lost everything except their work”. 

Dr. Habicht began by explaining what initially brought him to Ukraine. 

Somaya Faruqi is one of the lucky ones. She managed to escape from Afghanistan in August 2021, just as the Taliban overran the country’s capital. Today, while the 20-year-old engineering student pursues a degree at Missouri S&T university in the US, her former classmates back home have been banned from the classroom by the de facto authorities.

In support of this week’s Education Cannot Wait conference in Geneva and its call for learning support in emergencies, Somaya has been speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson. She strongly believes education can help change discriminatory views about girls, women and their place in society.

The women of earthquake and war-ravaged northwest Syria all have the same message for the international community: help establish peace and restore some sense of hope for the future.

That’s according to Laila Baker from the UN sexual and reproductive health agency UNFPA, who has been telling UN News what she’s seen and heard on the ground in Syria, in the past nine days of frantic relief efforts to save lives following the disaster.

May Yaacoub of our Arabic service, asked the UNFPA Regional Director to describe conditions around her.