Week in Review

The UN General Assembly will seek the opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on countries’ obligations to address climate change, following the adoption by consensus of a resolution on Wednesday. 

Urgent efforts must be made to de-escalate the situation following Russia’s announcement last weekend that it plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, the UN disarmament chief warned the Security Council on Friday.

Education is the “most powerful weapon” in the world’s arsenal to combat the brutal legacy of racism playing out today, the UN chief said on Monday, as the General Assembly met to mark the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Conservation jobs are scarce in the leafy village of Toraut, Indonesia, so when 27-year-old Fadlun Arrayan Bonde returned from university, she answered a call for women to help to patrol the neighbouring national park. She ended up forging a dynamic new career path to protect nature while transforming her community.

The planet is literally drowning in garbage, and it is high time to clean up, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday, at an event in the General Assembly Hall marking the first-ever International Day of Zero Waste. 

Although no region is immune to terrorism, the situation in Africa is especially concerning, Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Tuesday, underlining UN support to countries striving to “end this scourge.” 

UN food and atomic energy agencies are readying to reap the rewards of a ground-breaking ‘astrobotany’ investigation, announcing on Monday that seeds sent to space in 2022 are now poised to return to Earth.

A timetable for the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to fully withdraw, has yet to be agreed with the Government there, but constructive negotiations are continuing, MONUSCO chief Bintou Keita has told UN News, in an in-depth interview.

The UN mission’s core mandate is protection of civilians, but in many places of the partially militia-controlled east, there’s simply no authority which can keep people safe, if MONUSCO pulls out.

And when it comes to fighting deadly misinformation, Ms. Keita said it has been a “painful curve”, but the mission has now become proactive on social and other media platforms, to help stop its spread.

Jerome Bernard, of our UN News French service, began by asking her what the minimum conditions would be for MONUSCO to responsibly draw down, and leave DRC.

Gambia has the highest per capita emigration rate of any African nation; between 2015 and 2020 over 33,000 Gambians, mainly young men, left home in search of better opportunities in Europe, despite the low likelihood of success, and significant dangers.

Since the end of the dictatorship in 2017, thousands of migrants have returned, and the UN is helping them to find jobs and start small businesses, as well as running projects aimed at developing the wider economy, and dissuading others from making the perilous trip by convincing them that they can have succeed at home.

In the fourth episode of our mini-series recorded in The Gambia, Conor Lennon meets a returned migrant making a life for himself and his family in the capital, Banjul, after a traumatic, two-year-long attempt to reach Italy.

Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa

The UN’s Elsie Initiative Fund (EIF) launched a fresh call for funding proposals on Thursday, aimed at improving opportunities for uniformed women to serve in peacekeeping operations, and better serve vulnerable communities worldwide.

Top UN officials called for creating a new institution to help locate tens of thousands of missing Syrians and bring peace to their families, as the General Assembly debated on Tuesday the human rights situation in the country.

The UN Secretary-General on Tuesday called for a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of at least 39 migrants in a fire at a processing centre on the border between Mexico and the United States.