In addition to the week’s main news headlines focusing on President Biden’s potentially massive boost to global cooperation, we’ll be hearing from Myanmar, where the UN is helping to tackle child labour.

Plus, insight from guests Solange Behoteguy-Cortes and Alpha Diallo…thanks for listening! 

The head of the UN migration agency, IOM, is strongly advocating for governments everywhere to respect the “fundamental right of healthcare” when it comes to ensuring vulnerable migrants and the displaced get equal access to COVID-19 vaccines.

In an interview for UN News, António Vitorino wants migrants to be included in all plans, regardless of their legal status, adding that IOM stands ready to provide practical support to countries who need help battling the pandemic.

IOM’s Yasmina Guerda, began by asking the Director General to outline the overall impact of the pandemic on migrants and the displaced.

Nearly 60,000 people from Ethiopia’s volatile Tigray region have now crossed the border to remote southeastern Sudan, after more than two months of fighting, many with just the clothes on their backs. 

The emergency has created a massive protection challenge for the UN refugee agency in Sudan, UNHCR, which is doing everything it can to provide what they need, as spokesperson Axel Bisschop tells UN News’s Daniel Johnson. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to hamper the efforts of developing countries to adapt to the climate crisis. This is the analysis of Dr. Henry Neufeld, a climate mitigation expert, and one of the authors of the forthcoming report on climate change from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

Dr. Neufeld is the guest in this episode of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) State of the Planet podcast, in which host Tim Albone grills him about what climate adaptation actually means, and asks for his take on the latest UNEP Adaptation Gap report.

The senior UN official warns that, whilst the pandemic should have allowed governments to invest more use of green technologies, and bounce back stronger than before, there is little evidence so far that this is happening.

Migration is part of the modern world, and it is not going away despite a COVID slowdown, a UN official has told UN News, just ahead of a new UN migration report launched on Friday.

Jorge Bravo, the head of the Population Policies and Development Branch at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), explained to Conor Lennon from UN News that it has never been easier or faster to move around the world, which is more integrated and connected than ever before.

Although movement restrictions brought in during the COVID-19 pandemic limited migration in 2020, Mr. Bravo said that the longer-term trend is still showing an increase in the numbers of people leaving their countries of origin to live elsewhere.

This week’s show features the week’s news headlines, an interview with the World Food Programme (WFP) on the poorest of the poor in Madagascar, some of whom are eating mud and leaves to survive, and insight from regular guests from the UN Geneva team, Solange Behoteguy-Cortes and Alpha Diallo.

Compared to last year, everything is in place to successfully fight the devastating desert locust swarms that have been threatening food supplies and livelihoods across the Horn of Africa region, according to the senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official, in charge of forecasting the pest’s movements.

Charlotta Lomas spoke to Keith Cressman, who said that $80 million was still needed to control the scourge, through the coming months.

What progress is the world making in adapting to the changing climate? And can nature itself provide the answers? This is the focus of the first episode of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) State of the Planet podcast.

Host Tim Albone speaks to Valerie Kapos, head of the Climate Change & Biodiversity Programme of the UNEP’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre. She and her team look at the role of “nature-based solutions”, which involve maintaining and restoring ecosystems such as mangrove forests, which provide protection against rising sea levels and extreme weather.

Tim and Ms. Kapos discuss the findings of the latest UNEP Adaptation Gap report, which details the scale of the gulf between countries’ ambitions in adapting to the crisis, and what they are doing in practice.

After years of drought, and with what little the people of Madagascar have managed to grow, destroyed by flashflooding, more than 1.3 million are in crisis - and some are even eating ground-up clay just to survive. 

Movement restrictions relating to COVID-19 have also made it impossible for the poorest of the poor to find work to tide them over the lean season, the World Food Programme, WFP, has warned. 

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, WFP’s regional director for southern Africa, Lola Castro, explains how the UN agency is helping by empowering communities to withstand future climate shocks

Homeworking has necessarily exploded since the COVID-19 pandemic took a grip on the world in 2020, with the UN labour agency (ILO) estimating that it may have more than doubled, from around 260 million people in 2019, to some 580 million.

A new ILO report, released on Wednesday, lays out the penalties paid by those now having to work from home, which include higher health risks, lower wages, and social isolation.

However, Sergei Soares, a labour economist at the ILO who worked on the report, told UN News’s Conor Lennon, that some employers are happy with the productivity gains they have seen, which means the “great teleworking experiment” is likely to continue.

Mr. Soares began by explaining that the impetus behind the publication of the report was the fact that very few countries have ratified the ILO’s Home Work Convention, which entered into force some twenty years ago.