“How obscene it would be for a country…that still has poverty, that still has all these problems, to spend billions in nuclear weapons. What for?”

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi has specialized in non-proliferation and disarmament issues for more than 35 years – ever since he began his career as a diplomat in his native Argentina, when the country's then military dictatorship announced that it had mastered uranium enrichment. Rafael shares how a meeting in his twenties with atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima profoundly changed his perspective. He also explains benefits of nuclear technology as he prepares to launch Rays of Hope, an initiative to scale cancer treatment for women across Africa.

Survivors of genocide and other atrocities committed by ISIL fighters in Iraq should rest assured that the international community supports them. That’s the message from Christian Ritscher, head of UNITAD, the special UN team investigating these crimes. While it might appear action is slow coming, he said there is no statute of limitations and crimes can be prosecuted “as long as at least one perpetrator is alive.” Mr. Ritscher was in New York recently and spoke to UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki, prior to presenting the latest UNITAD report to the Security Council. 

If news headlines get you down sometimes, I’ve got the antidote: it’s youth activist Gitanjali Rao.  

At just 15, Miss Rao was Time Magazine’s first Kid of the Year in 2021 – in recognition of her success in solving problems through science. 

She was in Geneva for the Youth Activists Summit, which is where UN News’s Daniel Johnson caught up with her.

At times it seemed that a COP26 resolution was still hours or even days away but, on Saturday evening, a final document was finally adopted, despite the misgivings expressed by many countries at revised language regarding fossil fuels. COP26 President, Alok Sharma, seemed close to tears at one point, betraying the enormous pressure felt by so many of those closely involved with the negotiations. In the last episode of the Lid Is On from COP26, Conor Lennon and Laura Quiñones discuss the outcome of the conference, the Glasgow Climate Pact.

While human activity has already influenced the climate, there are opportunities to mitigate its effects on Planet Earth. Back in April, four astronauts, including FAO Goodwill Ambassador Thomas Pesquet, travelled into space. They carried out a series of scientific experiments set to contribute to the fight against climate change and support global food security.

Producers: Charlotta Lomas, Anais Hotin, Marina Sánchez Castelo.
Presenter: Charlotta Lomas, FAO.
Photo credit: © ESA / NASA.
Sound effects provided by ESA and NASA.

What is a day like in the life of the epidemiologist heading the global response to COVID-19? For the past 21 months, WHO COVID-19 Technical Lead Maria Van Kerkhove has been working around the clock with thousands of scientists to try to keep all of us safe. In this personal and insightful episode of the podcast Awake at Night, Maria shares her memories of the first moment she became aware of COVID-19 – before most of the world knew it existed – and then she takes us behind the scenes of WHO’s early steps to tackle the crisis. 

In this episode of No Denying It, the UN climate action podcast, UN News talked to Mr. Ezekiel about why we should be treating climate change with the same urgency we have treated COVID-19, how he works with local leaders and youth to protect Ghana’s environment, and why he faced arrest for simply speaking out against coal.

“I've seen horrible things. I've seen massacres. Human suffering. These are not easy sights to see. The best way I found to deal with that is just to be determined to fix it in some fashion.”

UN Humanitarian Coordinator and Resident Coordinator for Yemen David Gressly has seen some of the worst of man's inhumanity to man during a career of more than 40 years in peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and development. In this episode, he talks with podcast host Melissa Fleming about what has driven him to devote his life to helping the most vulnerable in some of the most fragile places on earth.

With more than 20 million people in need of assistance and a seven-year ongoing war, Yemen is among the world's worst humanitarian crises. But it’s not just conflict that threatens the Yemeni people. As David explains, every three days someone is injured or even killed by landmines or unexploded ordnance. During this eye-opening conversation, David shares his concerns about the dire situation in Yemen and the likelihood of being able to sustain the humanitarian response in the year ahead. 

Who says children shouldn’t play in the kitchen? Cooking healthy food starts young in this Touch Smell Taste cooking class in Rome. The hands-on cooking lab, led by Naheda Slayih and supported by volunteers, invites visually impaired children to learn how to become young chefs and have a good time too.

Producers: Megan Williams, Charlotta Lomas, Anais Hotin, Marina Sánchez Castelo, Nina Coates.
Presenter: Megan Williams.
Photo: ©FAO/Cristiano Minichiello.

You aren’t alone. You just haven’t found your community yet.

Cassia Moraes knows the power of community. She’s building a global network of young people, trained to take on climate jobs and to support each other in solving the climate crisis. 

UN News talked to Ms. Moraes about the Young Climate Leaders program, where young people work to solve real problems, and to provide a reality check to the climate movement bubble, strengthened by the “entrepreneurship of scarcity.”

No Denying It, the UN climate action podcast, brings you the voices of young climate changemakers from across our warming planet. In this episode Mamadou Ndiaye introduces Cassia Moraes.

"We're talking about children sometimes, about babies… We're talking about women at very vulnerable ages. We're also talking about men that desperately seek employment and find their hands into criminal gangs that would exploit them for sexual purposes to any other purposes."

Ilias Chatzis heads the team fighting human trafficking and migrant smuggling at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. In this episode, he joins podcast host Melissa Fleming to talk about how a man who grew up on a Greek island came to have a burning sense of justice and a crime-fighting career of more than 25 years.

In this conversation, Ilias describes how reports about online abuse of children and sexual predation of women have surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and how criminals are always adapting to new technologies to exploit their victims.

In the fifth episode of the UN climate action podcast No Denying It, United Nations Messenger of Peace Jane Goodall, known for her groundbreaking scientific work studying chimpanzees, interviews Xiaoyuan "Charlene" Ren.

Ms. Ren is the founder of MyH20, a network that collects drinking water data to help find solutions to improve water quality across China. Globally, two billion people lack access to safe drinking water, a figure that will only go up as infrastructure struggles to keep pace with new climate change-related weather patterns.

"We took around seven children back to the UNICEF compound here in Kabul… there was a little boy called Mudares [...

"We know that whenever you have these sort of atrocity crimes that happened here [Bosnia and Herzegovina], they're often preceded by hate." Ingrid Macdonald, UN Resident Coordinator in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is tasked with spearheading the UN’s efforts to support development in a country deeply scarred by ethnic divisions and the legacy of war and the 1995 genocide at Srebrenica. Since relocating to Sarajevo in early 2020, just as COVID-19 was taking hold, Ingrid has been focused on finding ways to bring divided communities together and tackle hate speech and genocide denial, just 26 years after Bosnian Serb forces massacred 8,000 Muslim men and boys. She talks about the challenges she faced in her roles and of trying to advocate for the vulnerable, including women in Afghanistan.

“When I could no longer pursue the dream of being an artist because my hands became too weak to hold a pencil, I needed [...] a new dream [...] that is, in itself, a gift to be able to [...] change direction and ask yourself, what else? That I still have my spirit. I still have my mind and I still have a deep desire and yearning for an extraordinary life. And I still want to be of service to humanity and the world.” In this episode of Awake at Night, we meet Eddie Ndopu; an award-winning disability activist from South Africa and one of 17 UN advocates for the SDGs. Diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy and given only 5 years to live, he is now 30 and has dedicated his life to ensure that the voices of those at greatest risk of being left behind are being amplified and heard worldwide.