UN Interviews

The work of the UN and its partners never stops against human traffickers in West and Central Africa, who force people to risk their lives on dangerous journeys across the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean Sea. 

Even the COVID crisis hasn’t stopped the smugglers – they’ve just resorted to taking bigger risks to cross borders that have been closed to others.  

So says Vincent Cochetel – he’s the UN refugee agency’s (UNHCR) Special Envoy for the Western and Central Mediterranean. 

He’s been talking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson about the many ways the agency helps vulnerable people in the Sahel. 

In this week’s 15-minute catch-up, we hear from the UN Refugee Agency on efforts to stop human traffickers from exploiting vulnerable people who’ve lost their jobs because of COVID-19, plus the week’s top stories from the UN and comments from regular guests Alpha Diallo and Solange Behoteguy-Cortes – with poetry to boot from Uruguayan scribe Eduardo Galeano. Enjoy the show!  

Vered Kater knew from childhood that she would become a nurse. Not due to any special knowledge of the profession, but a desire to provide to others the type of intense care that delivered her from the Holocaust.

Before Ms. Kater built a legacy as a health worker, traveling to developing countries to administer aid to the needy, her early years in her native Holland, were spent in hiding. Living under cover with her “war parents'', who shielded her from the Nazis, Ms. Kater was spared from the horrors of con-centration camps.

She shared her testimony during the annual observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the Holocaust at the UN information Center (UNIC) in Yangon in 2019, and now gives an in-depth recount of her story of survival.

She speaks to Natalie Hutchison for this first edition of In Their Words: Surviving the Holocaust. Finding hope from her home in Jerusalem, with a message of warning on discrimination that goes unchallenged.

Photo Credit: UNIC Yangon

Music Credit: Ketsa

Featuring the week’s main top stories from the UN – including an interview with ILO’s Dorothea Schmidt-Klau on how COVID-19 has created the greatest crisis faced by the world of work since the Great Depression. 

We have the latest on fighting Yemen, and the rusting supertanker Safer, off the Hudaydah coast, plus an appeal from UN-appointed independent rights experts over the cremation of coronavirus victims in Sri Lanka. Host Daniel Johnson will be joined by regular guests Solange Behoteguy-Cortes and Alpha Diallo.

India has embarked on one of the largest COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in the world, with more than 2,600  WHO staff training nearly half a million team members.

That’s according to Dr. Roderico H. Ofrin, Representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in India, which is one of the main UN agencies supporting the government-led drive. 

Anshu Sharma asked Dr. Ofrin about WHO’s work there, including efforts to counter hesitancy and misinformation surrounding vaccination.

The equivalent of 255 million full-time jobs were lost in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recovery next year is likely to be slow – but it’s not all bad news, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO). 

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, ILO’s Dorothea Schmidt-Klau maintains there is hope that the crisis will lead to new opportunities in the green economy, which is where young jobseekers in particular, should seek work. 

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.