Our UN teams are on the ground, working with governments and key stakeholders to bolster countries’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, helping ensure a smooth recovery. They tackle a range of multi-faceted priorities and key initiatives on a daily basis—from climate action to gender equality and food security—and utilize innovative approaches to problem-solving to better serve communities. Below are some highlights of their work this month.
Six months after a devastating earthquake the Government of Haiti is bringing the international community together to advocate for reconstruction and recovery.
Scaled-up investments in local food systems are critical to ensure sustainable food security and nutrition for forcibly displaced people and host communities, three UN agencies say, ahead of World Food Day on 16 October.
The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration has begun. The UN has appealed to leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean — a region containing seven of the most biodiverse countries in the world — to scale up commitments made to restore our much-needed ecosystems. This plea comes as Caribbean countries brace for an active hurricane season.
In response, UN teams around the world have marshalled forces not only to stop the spread of the disease, but to deal with its many secondary effects—from massive job losses to increases in gender-based violence. Here are five ways the UN is combating the pandemic.
Yemenis currently live through the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, a disaster compounded by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and severe economic crisis. Two thirds of Yemenis need humanitarian assistance to survive. More than 16 million people will face hunger this year.
In January, tropical storm Eloíse killed at least 6 people in Mozambique. That number might seem low, but the true impact is much greater. The storm also displaced 18,000 people and has affected a total of 250,000. It also caused considerable damage to 76 health centres and 400 classrooms.
By the end of 2020, COVID-19 had killed nearly 2 million people and left many millions more with lasting injury. It also led to larger crises in health, jobs, education, domestic violence, migration, and more. That’s a lot of fires to put out. But the United Nations is built to deal with many challenges at once.
Millions of people are falling back into poverty each year due to shocks ranging from both localized severe weather to major disaster events including drought, floods and storms and, as demonstrated by COVID-19, pandemic and epidemic disease.
