UN Interviews

In this second podcast from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) marking the agency’s 75th birthday, Andre Vornic tracks how FAO helped make the dream of a “world of plenty” more of a reality in the post-World War Two period, in the fight against hunger and inequality.  

Audio credits: producer and reporter: Andre Vornic, post-production: Eric Deleu 

The Security Council on Tuesday voted to end the hybrid UN-African Union civilian support operation for Darfur, UNAMID, beginning the drawdown on 1 January.

It marks the end of a force that can withdraw, knowing that government is now “in the right hands”, according to the UN Joint Special Representative, Jeremiah Mamabolo, although as he tells UN News in this exclusive interview it does not mean the UN is leaving.

A new assistance mission UNITAMS, will continue to support peacebuilding efforts, with most of the violence that killed some 300,000 in Darfur, and displaced millions now apparently over.

Mr. Mamabolo begin by telling Abdelmonem Makki of our UN News Arabic team - a Darfuri himself - what UNAMID had achieved since 2007, beyond fulfilling its core mandate of keeping civilians safe.

Presidential elections are scheduled to take place in the Central African Republic this Sunday, despite violence that has threatened to disrupt the nationwide poll.

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, one of top UN officials there, Denise Brown, describes what’s at stake, in her capacity as the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, and stressed that rumours of armed groups marching on the capital, were simply false.

In this week’s show, comedian AK Dans explains how he’s on a mission to challenge stereotypes about his fellow refugees. We’ll have news headlines and insight on migration in Latin America and West and Central Africa, from regular guests Solange Behoteguy-Cortes, and Alpha Diallo, of the Information Service at UN Geneva. 

Irrepressible comedian AK Dans was born in the world’s largest refugee camp, Kakuma, in Kenya, after his mother fled South Sudan in the 1990s. 

He’s now a successful stand-up artist – or was - until the COVID-19 crisis put a temporary halt to his live shows. 

But you can’t keep a good man down for long, and now AK’s latest challenge is taking part in an online show with the support of UN refugee agency, UNHCR. 

As the agency marks it’s 70th birthday this week, he’s been explaining to UN News’s Daniel Johnson how he got into comedy in the first place – and how he wants to help break stereotypes about what refugee life is like. 

This week’s show hears from Liz Corbin from public service broadcaster the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) she gives us all sorts of insight into the difficulties of getting “life or death” news out to people everywhere in the age of COVID.

Plus, a quick round-up of the week’s other stories. 

How do you keep the cameras rolling as a member of one of the biggest TV broadcast organizations in the world, in the middle of a global health crisis?

That’s been the challenge for Liz Corbin, Head of News at the European Broadcasting Union, a public service provider, whose members' programmes reach more than a billion people in dozens of countries.

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson in Geneva to coincide with the World Press Freedom Conference 2020, she explains how it became necessary to push back against efforts to politicise the pandemic, while also ensuring that “life or death” information reached all those anxiously looking for it.

The death rate through hunger and starvation in World War Two, rivals the number of those killed in combat. By 1945, agriculture had effectively ground to a halt, leaving hundreds of millions to survive on the equivalent of two potatoes a day.  

It was against this desperate backdrop that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was born, as an agency of the newly founded United Nations. Spurred on by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s call to secure freedom from want, its mission was simple: to help build a “world of plenty”.  

Marking the UN agency’s 75th anniversary, FAO’s Andre Vornic has produced a short podcast series on the founding of the key UN agency. In this first episode, ‘a hungry world rolls up its sleeves’. 

The first show spotlights the work of Radio Okapi, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the voice of UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO in the African nation.

To help understand how the radio network's tackling the problem of rumours and misinformation – and how it’s going online more and more to keep people listening - Daniel Johnson in Geneva caught up with the station’s head of Strategic Communication & Public Information, Christophe Boulierac.

Plus, a look back at other stories. 

In a world facing famine, major migration and conflict exacerbated by COVID-19, the UN, including its foundational body the Economic and Social Council, known as ECOSOC, is “vital” to promote global peace and cooperation. 

That’s according to Munir Akram, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN, who was elected ECOSOC President in July.

He told UN News’s Liz Scaffidi that urgent action needs to be taken now, to meet the needs of developing countries, “otherwise, we will have a humanitarian disaster on our hands”, but began the interview by explaining ECOSOC’s overall role.