Making sure that everyone gets access to food is one of the main challenges facing the international community according to the World Food Programme (WFP). The UN agency says there is enough food to feed the more than seven billion people on the planet but a lack of equality means that many people, especially in [...]

Emotional vulnerability is making young people prime targets for recruitment by violent extremists. That's one of the messages to emerge from a panel on youth and countering violent extremism, at UN Headquarters in early July. Youth Civil Activism Network, or YouthCAN, led the discussion, which demonstrated ways in which included ways in which positive messaging [...]

Listen to a bulletin of news and features from United Nations Radio, with Dianne Penn and Matthew Wells. In today's programme: Severe fighting in western Aleppo displaces thousands; and, the UN's labour organization, the ILO, warns that austerity measures are putting “social protection” rights at risk.

Victims of human trafficking can be manipulated to believe that they love and need the person trafficking them, according to one survivor. Sheila McClain, who is from the United States, ran away from home as a young girl after being abused. By the time she was 18, she was being prostituted and was subsequently trafficked [...]

Expansion of a food voucher system in Yemen has allowed the World Food Programme (WFP) to reach 55,000 people in a hard-to-reach area of Taiz city during the past month. Through the project, WFP supplied families with vouchers which they used to get wheat grain, vegetable oil, salt, sugar and other food items from local [...]

Intense fighting continued on Monday in the western part of the Syrian city of Aleppo, putting hundreds of thousands of civilians at risk, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has warned. Opposition groups launched the offensive on Sunday in efforts to break a de facto siege on the east, where the UN and its partners have [...]

A new treaty to combat illegal fishing has been described as the "ultimate weapon" to fight the issue in Africa. The Port State Measures Agreement which is aimed specifically at tackling illegal, unreported and unregulated or IUU fishing across the world is backed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The agreement will block improperly [...]

What happens when a tourist and a refugee meet? That's the central question at the heart of a new film screened at UN Headquarters in July. "The Island of All Together" was shot on the Greek island of Lesvos. The documentary features conversations between a refugee and a tourist sitting together on a bench. It [...]

  A new rule has come into force this month aimed at reducing the number of accidents at sea caused by shipping containers. From now on, each individual container's weight must be verified before loading. Lee Adamson is head of public information for the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and he says the new rule should [...]

Human rights concerns over opposition imprisonment in Gambia The recent mass imprisonment of opposition members in Gambia has raised the concern of the UN human rights office, OHCHR. Thirty members of the United Democratic Party, including its leader, were last week sentenced to three years in jail for participating in peaceful protests in April. OHCHR [...]