On 14 June, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued his flagship annual report,
Global Trends: Forced Displacement 2022. It states that by the end of 2022, the number of people displaced by war, persecution, violence and human rights abuse had dramatically increased by 19.1 million — the biggest increase on record — reaching a total of 108.4 million.
Cecilia Erzuah was torn between two opposite career paths at the end of university. The week she was supposed to begin military training, her professor offered her a position as a lecturer.
Everyone knows that small island states are on the frontline of global warming. Rising sea levels, acidification destroying fisheries and coral reefs, and changing patterns of rainfall are just some of the challenges. Some low-lying islands have already been lost to the ocean.
The links between Agenda 2030 and SDGs, including climate action and biodiversity preservation are clear and straightforward. Yet, leveraging them, and bringing them to together in a unified framework, remains extremely challenging.
As it did last year, the 2023 United Nations General Assembly has been debating what role the United Nations and its members should play in the crisis in Ukraine.
In recent years, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have spread rapidly. While usually profitable for the private partners, PPPs have generally not served the longer-term public interest.
The world is now half way to 2030 but the ambitious goals agreed in 2015 including the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are under threat, action is urgently needed.
With its global representation, one would expect the UN General Assembly to touch on many diverse issues. And it does. But talks have repeatedly come back to one unifying call: if we want to save ourselves, our planet, and our future, we must act now.
When the UN’s 193 member states reviewed the current status of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030, the verdict was mostly failures—and with little or no successes.
The hunger/poverty nexus was best characterized by Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), who warned last week that under current trends, 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030—and as many people suffering from hunger by 2030 as in 2015 (600 million people).
What does transformative and sweeping really mean in the overarching efforts to achieve the Agenda 2030?
With the conclusion of the second edition of the SDG Summit, it is time for stocktaking on what was agreed at the United Nations HQ in New York this week. At the core of the Summit were not the several
Leaders’ Dialogues that, as important as it can be to have heads of state and government reflecting on the Agenda, are just talking shops without any practical implications.
For the people of Seychelles, the ocean is more than just a source of livelihood. It is also a way of life. About 80% of our homes and infrastructure are located along the coast and those homes and infrastructures are impacted by the ocean in various ways.
The growing and changing material requirements for new technologies have triggered natural resource scrambles for strategic minerals, generating dangerous rivalries fought out in the global South.
In 2015, the UN’s 193 member states adopted 17 goals for the health of the world that together comprise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be reached worldwide by 2030.
Politically, the United Nations has largely been described as a monumental failure ---with little or no progress in resolving some of the world’s past and ongoing military conflicts and civil wars, including Palestine, Western Sahara, Kashmir, and more recently, Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan and Myanmar, among others.
In today's increasingly interconnected world, marked by grave economic, environmental, and security crises that transcend global boundaries, it's abundantly clear that our interdependence is an undeniable reality.
In 2002, the
Human Development Report (UNDP) focused on ‘
Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World’. It was an important discourse then [and still is] that evoked lot of insightful cross-regional exchanges of ideas. It reiterates that politics matter for human development because people everywhere want to be free to determine their destinies, express their views and participate in the decisions that shape their lives.
The Latin American and Caribbean region is arriving at the Sustainable Development Goals Summit on the right track but far behind in terms of progress, at the halfway point to achieve the SDGs, which aim to overcome poverty and create a cleaner and healthier environment.
At the
UN SDG Summit in New York,
the Forus global civil society network is calling for decisive action on SDG implementation. Clearly, as we hit the midpoint towards the "finish line" of the Agenda 2030, progress is stagnating.
“What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!” youth chanted in an unusually lively conference at the United Nations Headquarters.
With hope and courage, we must rise to the challenges before us. We must rise to the challenge of a world set afire by climate change, forced displacement, armed conflicts and human rights abuses. We must rise to the challenge of girls being denied their right to an education in Afghanistan. We must rise to the challenge of a global refugee crisis that is disrupting development gains the world over. We must rise to the challenge of brutal and unconscionable wars in places like Sudan and Ukraine that are putting millions of children at risk every day.
The General Assembly and ECOSOC Affairs Division has around 40 staff members, with the combined role to facilitate the deliberations and decision-making of intergovernmental bodies such as the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council and their subsidiary organs.