Week in Review

The UN Secretary-General on Friday strongly condemned Friday’s terrorist attack by a Palestinian man outside a synagogue in a Jerusalem neighbourhood which has left at least seven Israelis dead, and three others injured.

At a UN ceremony to mark the Holocaust on Friday, Secretary-General António Guterres warned that antisemitism, hate speech, and misinformation are ever-present, 90 years on from the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany.

Racism in the United Kingdom is “structural, institutional and systemic”, independent UN human rights experts said on Friday, warning that people of African descent in the country continue to encounter discrimination and erosion of their fundamental rights.

This year, the theme of the UN Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked on Friday, is “home and belonging”, two concepts that were systematically ripped away from Jewish citizens, once the Nazi Party took control of Germany in 1933.

Nearly two years on from Myanmar’s brutal military coup against the democratically-elected government, the country has sunk deeper than ever into crisis, undergoing a  wholesale regression in human rights, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Friday.

A combination of determination, a vision, and UN support is transforming the fortunes of remote villages in underdeveloped regions of Eastern Indonesia, and boosting the livelihoods and prospects of local farmers.

The Secretary-General spent Sunday travelling through the diverse and varied landscapes of Santo Antão, where, after five years of intense drought, several development projects supported by the United Nations are helping to transform the agricultural sector of this westernmost island of Cabo Verde.

Costa Rica is known for its strong democracy, pro-human rights stance, and deep respect of the rule of law, so it was a shock when the 2018 general elections ushered in an unprecedented polarization of Costa Rican society.

This shift was accompanied by a sharp rise in hate speech and expressions of discrimination and xenophobia.

In the last episode of this season of UNiting Against Hate, Katy Dartford looks at the ways that the country, with strong support from the UN, decided to confront the problem.

Find out more about the UN’s #NoToHate campaign here.

Music: Backcomb, Ketsa

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The UN must present “a united front” in the fight for women’s rights in Afghanistan, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said after returning from a two-week country visit spanning several continents. 

A lifelong ambition of 16-year-old Kaloenic Ilac, or Kale, has been to travel to New York and visit the UN. In January, the Make-a-Wish Foundation made his dream a reality with a bespoke tour involving an ambassador and a senior UN official.

On the last episode of amplifyHER, we speak to singer, songwriter, and social media star Lyn Lapid.

A first-generation American born to Filipino immigrants, Lyn found social media fame after launching her Tik Tok page in late 2019, quickly building an audience of five million followers, captivated by her voice.

A snippet of her first original song, Producer Man, exploded on the platform, becoming the most viewed unreleased demo on a Tik Tok video in 2020. She tells us about the inspiration for the song, about a bad experience in the still male-dominated music industry, and the challenges and opportunities of starting a music career on social media.

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_{Original music that appears in amplifyHER is included with the kind permission of the artists. All rights reserved.}

Women from Brazil’s indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable to gender-based violence, but UN-backed initiatives, and a change in the law, are encouraging them to seek protection.

How can a country secure a sustainable future if 99.3 per cent of its territory is water? UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Saturday arrived in Cabo Verde, the 10-island archipelago off West Africa’s Atlantic coast that is exploring innovative solutions to help answer that important question. 

The court order closing down Russia’s oldest human rights organization, the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG), is “yet another blow to human rights and civic space in the country”, said a Spokesperson for the UN rights office, OHCHR on Thursday.

Commitments made last year at a landmark UN conference to transform education globally must be translated into action, Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday in his message to mark the International Day of Education.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) appealed on Tuesday for $1.6 billion to fund core operations this year, as the people it helps face hitting “rock bottom”.

On the last day of his visit to Cabo Verde, UN Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the Ocean Race Summit Mindelo, saying that “ending the ocean emergency is a race we must win.”