Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director, warns that climate change poses an existential threat far greater than COVID-19. "[P]eople understood COVID because it was imminent," she said. Yet, "it's a fact that COVID is [...] a small overture to what will happen if we do not take action on climate."

Inger describes UNEP as ‘the environmental conscience’ of the world. "Our job is to tell the world honestly, without scaremongering, what science tells us and then to support countries [...] so that they can implement what it is that we are telling them needs to get done."

Science, in Inger's words "has to make its way to the dinner table, to the voting booth, to the school playground, into the boardrooms. Science needs to be understood so there is not something that only some people in a high ivory tower can deal with. But that anyone gets."

“You have more than 30 countries in Africa that have a degree of plastic bans. [...] If they can do it, then why can't we in the wealthy world? When we respect nature, and our planet, we are respecting ourselves. And when we fail to, we are in fact disrespecting ourselves, or certainly the next generation and their life."

:: Inger Andersen interviewed by Melissa Fleming

"Five months after losing my son in the #BeirutBlast I have decided to start writing about my experiences of grief and trauma. I can't promise it will be eloquent, or even make sense, and it certainly won't be pretty. But I hope this process is cathartic for me."

On August 4th 2020, as Sarah Copland was working and preparing for the arrival of her second child, Ethan, she and her family were tragically caught in the vast explosion that caused devastation across Beirut.

Isaac, Sarah’s first born son, was killed.

Trying to understand her grief, Sarah started writing a blog, and in the process, her words have resonated with others experiencing loss.

Sarah Copland is a UN Officer working on women's rights and gender equality in the ESCWA Centre for Women.

:: Sarah Copland interviewed by Melissa Fleming

"Maybe that's what attracted me to this kind of work as well, because there isn't a script, you know, no one really tells you when you're in the middle of a crisis, what's right and what's wrong. You know, a lot of it is instinctual. A lot of it is based on sort of your principles as a human being."

Richard Ragan, the Country Director of the World Food Programme in Bangladesh, says a sense of adventure drew him to working for the UN and it also fuels his passion for outdoor sports. He says he functions better in environments, where you have to think on your feet. But with his line of work comes enormous responsibility:

“I don't want one person that I'm responsible for to be hungry. And you know, that, that keeps me up at night, for sure. But the thing that scares me, probably more than anything, and, you know, there's no vaccination for it, is climate change. ... It's like the waves or the mountains, it doesn't care."

:: Richard Ragan interviewed by Melissa Fleming

"And he rushes up to embrace his mother. At that moment, I just said, thank you. This is what happiness is, I want to do this all my life. I just want to repatriate refugees for the rest of my life."

This week’s guest is Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, which delivers education in humanitarian crises through funding investments for UN agencies and civil society organizations. Yasmine describes herself as a pragmatic idealist, who was taught by her mother not to look for success in life, but to seek to serve. Before her current role Yasmine worked for UNHCR resettling refugees.  She says that her mission now is crucial to helping people overcome crises and rebuild their lives:

“If you invest in the children, give them the tools, the education, so that they are no longer disempowered, that if you and I cannot change the world, they can do it.”

:: Yasmine Sherif interviewed by Melissa Fleming

"Days go by. And you know that every single day is a day of somebody losing their lives, or their livelihoods. And so you say to them, no more time!" 

Martin Griffiths is the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Yemen, a country that has been devastated by civil war, and which is experiencing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises with famine, very little medical care, and now the coronavirus pandemic. Working to end the six-year conflict there is only the latest challenge in his long career as a mediator and humanitarian worker,  and while he admits to being impatient for results, he also describes himself as an optimist, even if only 10 percent of mediation efforts ever succeed: 

"But that priceless moment, which I can only really associate with mediation, is to die for."

:: Martin Griffiths interviewed by Melissa Fleming

"This is why exile, refugee exile is so devastating, because it is the admission to oneself, that home is not safe anymore. There are very few decisions that a human being can make, that are as difficult as choosing the path of exile. And this is what displaced and refugees do.”

Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is recovering from Covid-19, and says it's given him a sense of the fragility of life. He says the socio-economic effects of the epidemic, including  rising poverty, are especially dire for refugees and displaced people.

"We believe, for example, that 50% of the refugee girls who used to go to school before the pandemic, may not ever go back to school afterwards, because their families are too poor to support their education. They'll go to work. But it could be even worse. They could go into early marriage, they could go into exploitation and worse."

:: Filippo Grandi interviewed by Melissa Fleming

"So what we try to bring to the top level, and then at the advocacy level is that all of those things are important because they do impact on the way that women and men, boys and girls access those resources and services [...] they cannot be gender neutral, because their lives are not gender neutral. That's not how people live their lives. "

Funmi Balogun is the head of Humanitarian Action at UN Women, supporting some of the world’s most vulnerable women and girls - people who are displaced or refugees. She works to make sure that the humanitarian response does not perpetuate gender inequality.

"[M]en usually do not leave those camps [...] they stay in those camps as a security net, but the women and children have to go out, they have to look for food. So the women become very vulnerable to violence to all sorts of abuses. At the same time, they are not leading in those camps. They are not the ones who speak about what type of food, they're not the ones who are consulted, about what types of housing, they are not the ones that are consulted in everything."

:: Funmi Balogun interviewed by Melissa Fleming

"And now you have a lockdown in your country, and you don't know where to turn and nobody's there when you call the hotline. This is something that is a crisis. Even the death of a woman [...] has increased during this year of 2020 with the coronavirus pandemic [...] girls are not in school. They're accessible to random people who are in their environment..."

Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), is working to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.

“You really see… how important it is to have peace in the home and the ability for girl child in particular to be able to scream at the top of her lungs if she feels that something wrong is happening to her.”

:: Natalia Kanem interviewed by Melissa Fleming

"One of the things I hold on to is most people on the planet have escaped from those problems, as the generations have passed. And when you're confronting the next bleak, horrible event, holding on to the fact that it's possible to escape…is invaluable.”

Mark Lowcock, Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), leads global humanitarian relief efforts for the UN. Mark's optimism has sustained him throughout his 30-year career delivering aid to people suffering from war, poverty and famine.

:: Mark Lowcock interviewed by Melissa Fleming

"...[P]eople living with HIV need to go to the clinic to collect their ARVs. Now many are afraid because they think they're going to catch Corona there. Others are prohibited because lockdowns include restrictions on movement. So we had to move in quickly to help governments to know how to apply public safety measures that don't take away the opportunity for people living with HIV and are vulnerable to seek their treatments. Then there's also human rights, that when public safety measures are applied evenly and forcefully that certain groups of people whose human rights are contested tend to suffer even more. So you found gay people, you found sex workers, you found people who inject drugs, transgender people, facing particular difficulties, more discrimination, more stigmatisation in the context of Corona."

Winnie Byanyima recently became the Director-General of UNAIDS, the UN organization leading the global effort to end HIV AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Having been appointed in February, the start of her journey has been full on with the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic.

:: Winnie Byanyima interviewed by Melissa Fleming