Taking oath of office, António Guterres pledges to work for peace, development and a reformed United Nations
12 December 2016- Sworn in today as the ninth and next United Nations Secretary-General,António Guterrespledgedreposition development at the centre of the Organization'swork and ensure that the UN can change to effectively meet the myriad challenges facing the international community.
'The United Nations needs to be nimble, efficient and effective. It must focus more on delivery and less on process more on people and less on bureaucracy,' said Mr. Guterres after taking the oath of office at a ceremony before the 193-member UN General Assembly.
Mr. Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal (1995 to 2002) and former UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2005-2015) replaces Ban Ki-moon, who steps down at the end of the month after leading the global Organization for the past 10 years.
Nearly 535 million children living in crisis-hit countries – UNICEF
9 December 2016 – As the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of its work for the world's most vulnerable children, the agency today issued a stark warning that despite significant progress, too many children are still being left behind, with nearly 535 million of them living in harsh conditions, lacking access to decent health, education and protection services.
UN agency urges EU to adopt stronger and more pro-active approach on refugees
5 December 2016 – The United Nations refugee agency today proposed far-reaching reforms of Europe's management of refugees, including the asylum system, recalling that scenes of chaos at borders last year led to a breakdown in the public's trust in the capacity of governments to manage the refugee challenge and played into the hands of those wishing to turn those fleeing for their lives into scapegoats.
On International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, UN spotlights need to combat forced labour, particularly of children
2 December 2016 - Noting that the number of children engaged in the worst forms of child labour has decreased and frameworks to tackle contemporary slavery and trafficking have expanded, senior United Nations officials, including the Secretary-General and the head of the UN labour agency, today called for concerted action to save those who remain trapped in extreme exploitation, abuse and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence.
Partnership with MIT Solve Announced!
United Nations Academic Impact is officially partnering with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on their first ever Solve Challenge, and we need your ideas! Solve is a new initiative from MIT that hopes to tackle some of the world's largest challenges by bringing people from various background together in order to come up with solutions and create projects to test those. Through crowdsourcing of ideas, Solve hopes to build a community of technologists, researchers, business leaders, social entrepreneurs, change agents, and policy makers to support the selected projects from inspiration to experimentation and action and scalable implementation by providing feedback and mentorship.
MIT Solve works around four pillars
Learn- to provide quality education by 2050 to anyone, anywhere who wants to learn
Cure - to leverage innovations in healthcare delivery and medical research to make care affordable and universally available
THE SECRETARY-GENERAL'S MESSAGE ON WORLD AIDS DAY
Thirty-five years since the emergence of AIDS, the international community can look back with some pride but we must also look ahead with resolve and commitment to reach our goal of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030.
There has been real progress in tackling the disease. More people than ever are on treatment. Since 2010, the number of children infected through mother-to-child transmission has dropped by half. Fewer people die of AIDS-related causes each year. And people living with HIV are living longer lives.
The number of people with access to life-saving medicines has doubled over the past five years, now topping 18 million. With the right investments, the world can get on the fast-track to achieve our target of 30 million people on treatment by 2030. Access to HIV medicines to prevent mother-to-child transmission is now available to more than 75 percent of those in need.
United Nations Democracy Fund Call for Proposals
If you or your organization have a project proposal that will strengthen the voice of civil society, promote human rights, and encourage participation of all groups in the democratic process, this is your chance to receive funding from the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF).
UNDEF is looking for high impact, two year-long projects that would be eligible for a grant of up to US$300,000 per project. A large majority of UNDEF funds go to local civil society organizations. In this way, UNDEF plays a distinct role in complimenting the United Nation&rsquos work with governments, strengthening democratic governance around the world.
UNDEF is looking for a project that deals with one or more of these seven main areas:
Women's rights and empowerment / Gender equality
Community activism
Rule of Law and human rights
Youth engagement
Strengthening civil society capacity for interaction with Government
Participants endorse 'Ashgabat Statement' as first-ever UN conference on sustainable transport ends
27 November 2016 – The first-ever United Nations Global Sustainable Transport Conferenceconcluded today in the Turkmen capital, with more than 50 countries endorsing the 'Ashgabat Statement on Commitments and Policy Recommendations,' with a view to supporting cleaner, greener transportation – from local transit systems to worldwide multimodal networks.
The Conference has reinforced the importance of sustainable transport and has shown it is a shared global task, said Wu Hongbo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, at the closing ceremony.
Young Scientists IAUP Conference Call for Papers
The International Association of University Presidents (IAUP) Programme Committee invites you to participate in the new Triennial IAUP Young Scientists Conference from 5th-8th July 2017 in Vienna, Austria. Early career researchers and PhD students are invited to submit individual paper or poster presentation abstracts until the 15th December, 2016 deadline. All submissions will be reviewed according to scientific quality criteria. Accepted contributions will be published as hard copy collected abstracts and distributed at the conference. Selected papers will be invited for publication after the conference.
THE SECRETARY-GENERAL'S MESSAGE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DAY TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS 25 November 2016
At long last, there is growing global recognition that violence against women and girls is a human rights violation, public health pandemic and serious obstacle to sustainable development. Yet there is still much more we can and must do to turn this awareness into meaningful prevention and response.
Violence against women and girls imposes large-scale costs on families, communities and economies. When women cannot work as a result of violence, their employment may be put at risk, jeopardizing much-needed income, autonomy and their ability to leave abusive relationships. Violence against women also results in lost productivity for businesses, and drains resources from social services, the justice system and health-care agencies. Domestic and intimate partner violence remains widespread, compounded by impunity for those crimes. The net result is enormous suffering as well as the exclusion of women from playing their full and rightful roles in society.
UN Women's 'Orange the World' kicks off 16 days of activism to fight gender-based violence
21 November 2016 – The extent to which violence is embedded in society means that uprooting it is everyone's job, senior United Nations official said today, lamenting that violence against women and girls continue to be a low priority on the international development agenda and urging more action – and more funding – to end the pandemic of such violence now, once and for all.
On World Toilet Day, UN spotlights the impact of sanitation on peoples' livelihoods
18 November 2016 - To mark the 2016 edition of World Toilet Day, along with urging action to tackle the oft-neglected global sanitation crisis, the United Nations is also spotlighting the impact of sanitation -or lack of it -on livelihoods and work environments.
While the Day is an opportunity to raise awareness about the 2.4 billion people around the world who live without a toilet and the rates of diseases due to inadequate access to sanitation and unsafe water, this year, the theme toilets and jobs focuses on how lack of sanitation impacts people's livelihoods: the UN estimates that in many countries, it creates a 5 per cent loss in gross domestic product (GDP).
MARRAKECH: Ban hails 'new dawn of cooperation on climate change,' urges action on Paris accord
14 November 2016 - Ten days after the entry into force of the Paris Agreement on climate change, world leaders showed strong support for the implementation of this agreement at the opening of the high-level segment of the United Nations Climate Conference in Marrakech, Morocco, (COP 22) today.
International Science Center & Science Museum Day: Local to Global Solutions for Sustainability
Today is World Science Day for Peace and Development (WSDPD) and UNESCO and the International Council of Museums, science centers, science museums, and their worldwide networks have organized the first International Science Center and Science Museum Day (ISCSMD) to mark the occasion!
Science centers and museums all over the world are offering exhibitions, programs, and special events to share information on one or more of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with their thousands of visitors. The full agenda for the day can be viewed here.
UNAI and Factslides Join Forces to Raise Awareness about SDGs among Students and Teachers
United Nations Academic Impact and educational website Factslides.com are working together to raise awareness about the Sustainable Development Goals among students and teachers by offering interesting and engaging facts on the Global Goals.
Factslides is a high traffic content website that takes relevant and complex information from NGOs, think tanks, journals, specialized magazines and media and converts it into colorful and animated slideshows that are easy and fun to read, making the information accessible to students and teachers for research, lesson planning, and recreational purposes.