UN Interviews

The opening of two provincial offices for UN agencies operating in Papua New Guinea, reaffirms the Organization’s commitment to sustainable peace and development, senior officials there have said.  

The new offices are in Tari and Mendi, located in the remote Highlands Region, a mountainous and heavily forested part of the Pacific island nation that is difficult to access. 

Gianluca Rampolla is the UN Resident Coordinator for the country, often referred to by the acronym “PNG”. 

He told Julia Dean at the UN Information Centre in Australia, how the new investment in the highlands, builds on earlier action to address basic needs after a deadly earthquake in February 2018, and to promote peace in the wake of inter-communal conflict. 

Mr. Rampolla began by describing the Highlands Region.

The opening of two provincial offices for UN agencies operating in Papua New Guinea, reaffirms the Organization’s commitment to sustainable peace and development.  

Gianluca Rampolla, the UN Resident Coordinator for the country, spoke to Julia Dean at the UN Information Centre in Australia about the new investment.  

The COVID-19 pandemic could threaten food security across the entire world, if urgent action is not taken.  

That’s prompted the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to launch a new COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme, which aims to mitigate the immediate impacts of the pandemic while also strengthening food systems and livelihoods in the long-term.  

In this interview, FAO’s Charlotta Lomas speaks to the agency’s Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol, who describes what the plan entails, and why a global response is badly needed. 

In Pakistan, women are major contributors to agricultural production and food security for their families, but like many other nations, the COVID pandemic has exacerbated an already alarming gender gap there.

That’s especially true for rural women, where the amount of work and responsibility that they have to shoulder has gone up, leading to a decrease in living standards, as they’re forced to stay at home and care for others.

Mina Dowlatchahi, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Representative to Pakistan, explains to Charlotta Lomas, how the UN agency is supporting women in the countryside, despite the corrosive impact of the pandemic. 

Ensuring forests retain their rich biodiversity and continue contributing to the health and safety of communities everywhere, can help boost recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s the view Ewald Rametsteiner, Forestry Deputy Director at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) who points out that deforestation and degradation, is one way that dangerous viruses such as Ebola, have made their way into the human population in recent decades.

In this interview with FAO’s Charlotta Lomas, he explains why the forestry sector is important to building back from the ravages of the coronavirus.

The announcement that the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize is being described as an “amazing day” for its workers in the field, who put their lives on the line to help at-risk communities. 

That’s the message from Matthew Hollingdale, head of the agency’s South Sudan operation. 

In this interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, he’s been explaining how the 1,200-strong humanitarian team there, has been  helping communities hit by the worst flooding in decades and ongoing violence.

Sudan has been hit by devastating floods, the worst seen in decades, impacting more than 600,000 households across 17 of the country’s 18 states.  

With homes destroyed and farmland damaged just ahead of the harvest season, it’s been another shock amid multiple crises.  

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), urgent funding is needed to support a country already facing alarmingly high rates of hunger and food insecurity.  

Dominique Burgeon, FAO’s Director of emergency resilience, has just returned from a mission to Sudan. 

He told Charlotta Lomas how dire the situation really is for people there. 

Once the COVID-19 pandemic is behind us, all indications are, that cities are going to be “greener, cleaner, quieter, safer and more secure”.  

That’s the strong belief of iconic international architect Norman Foster, who’s been sharing this sustainable view with mayors from dozens of cities at a UN Economic Commission for Europe event in Geneva. 

In a wide-ranging interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Lord Foster begins by discussing how cities have emerged stronger from disaster in the past, and how they will likely look in the future. 

With high level meetings on-going to address the climate and biodiversity crisis centre stage at UN Headquarters, one of the Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group members is urging world leaders to make sure their decisions get back to the people that help shape policy on the ground. 

Ernest Gibson is co-coordinator for 350 Fiji, a regional youth-led climate change network in the Pacific, driven by young climate leaders, and he told Julia Dean of our UN Country Team in Australia, it was important to let groups like his, know that they’ve made a difference.