By Santo D. Banerjee NEW YORK (IDN) – Since the international community started implementing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), efforts on some of the Goals have been successful “in a number of areas”, but on the whole “progress has been slow or even reversed”, notes the UN, adding that the most vulnerable people and countries continue […]
UN Partners with Dataminr to Keep UN Teams Abreast of Crises
By Felicia Vacarelu The writer is Communication Specialist of UN Global Pulse – a flagship innovation initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General on big data – on which appeared the following as blog. NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) – This is the age of citizen journalism, where anyone armed with a smartphone and a social media account […]
UN Calls for Bridging Palestinian Refugee Agency’s Funding Shortfall
By Jaya Ramachandan NEW YORK (IDN) – UNRWA, officially the Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, faces a “serious funding shortfall”, the General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés has warned. The agency is $211 million short of the $1.2 billion needed to deliver its aid programmes. She was speaking […]
China Bags Yet Another Trophy with Qu Dongyu as FAO Chief
By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN | ROME (IDN) – With the election of Qu Dongyu as Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), China has made yet another stride in its unrelenting efforts to take over a signature role in strategic UN organisations and foster its massive ‘Belt and Road’ infrastructure […]
Pressing Need to Put Degraded Lands Back to Life
By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN | ANKARA (IDN) – Profoundly concerned that “desertification and drought are problems of global dimension in that they affect all regions of the world,” the international community adopted the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Paris on June 17,1994. Twenty-five years later, on the World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD) on […]
Danish Environmentalist Takes Over as UNEP Chief
By Radwan Jakeem NEW YORK | NAIROBI (IDN) – Danish economist and environmentalist Inger Andersen, who took over as Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, brings to the role a passion for conservation and sustainable development, promising to prioritize greater action on climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution during her four-year tenure. “I am […]
World Population Expected to Reach Nearly 10 Billion by 2050
Yet Another Challenge to Global Goals By Jaya Ramachandran NEW YORK (IDN) – Compared to 7.7 billion today, around 8.5 billion people are expected to inhabit the planet Earth within little more than a decade, and almost 10 billion by 2050, with only a few countries accounting for most of the increase, says to new […]
Low-income Countries Ensuring Liquidity as the UN Faces Financial Crisis
By J Nastranis NEW YORK (IDN) – The United Nations is at risk of running out of cash, Secretary-General António Guterres warned in a letter to UN staff in July 2018 and stated that he had “written to Member States regarding the troubling financial situation facing the United Nations”. The situation has not changed for […]
New Study Shows How AI Can Generate Fake UN Speeches
By Felicia Vacarelu The writer is Communication Officer of UN Global Pulse, a flagship innovation initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General on big data, which has released a new study discussing the risks that can arise from the malicious use of automated text generation software, and the potential impacts. The study used open-source tools and […]
Global Festival Looks Beyond Promises of Agenda 2030
By Sean Buchanan BONN (IDN) – The SDG Global Festival of Action, which takes place in Bonn every year, is an occasion for bringing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) campaigners and multi-stakeholder partners together for inspiring and broadening the global movement to take action for the SDGs. It provides a dynamic and interactive space to showcase the latest […]