Interviews United Nations

Following the 7 October terror attacks led by Hamas, thousands of Palestinians have been detained in what the Israeli Government has dubbed an “incarceration emergency” allowing them to fill prisons beyond official capacity. 
The overcrowded detention facilities and reports of alleged degrading treatment and even torture, prompted Alice Jill Edwards, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, to call for a full investigation into the overcrowding and reports of alleged abuses.
In an interview with UN News’s Anton Uspensky, she gave more details on what she’s learned.

UN agencies and their partners are providing support to thousands of people from the Kharkiv region in Ukraine who have been evacuated from frontline areas where intensive Russian air strikes continue.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said vulnerable boys and girls are among those arriving at a humanitarian hub in the main city, Kharkiv.
They include children with disabilities and those who had been living with foster families and will now need to be placed in new homes.
UN News’s Nargiz Shekinskaya asked Munir Mammadzade, UNICEF Head in Ukraine, about the challenges displaced families face. 

Without immediate action to protect biodiversity, a million species could be at risk, warns David Cooper, Acting Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
Due to unprecedented threat levels, he told UN News that coral reefs, amphibians, pollinating insects, and many large mammals are all on the brink of extinction due to rising temperatures, deforestation, pollution, and other factors. 
Speaking on the International Day for Biological Diversity, he told Anton Uspensky that most people support climate action, even if they don’t express it – and it’s time to leverage the power of this “invisible majority”.

As the war in Gaza continues, health facilities and healthcare workers are struggling to provide care to civilians amidst unfavourable circumstances, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) team lead for emergencies communications Nyka Alexander said on Monday. 
In an interview with UN News’s Khaled Mohamed, she said nowhere is safe in the enclave with only one third of its hospitals – about 12 out of 36 – still functioning at limited capacity.
In addition, medical supplies are low, workers are stressed and it has become difficult to treat many of those displaced.  

The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda is leading the charge for more climate action paving the way for “resilient prosperity” as host of this month’s upcoming International Conference on Small Island Developing States, SIDS4.
In an exclusive interview with UN News’s Shanaé Harte, Gaston Browne said the very survival of small island nations is increasingly at stake due to rising waters, extreme weather, crushing debt and lack of basic resources.

People living in countries rich in the minerals needed for the transition to a net-zero carbon global economy could find themselves victims of a new “resource curse”, remaining in poverty despite the new-found wealth of their leaders. 
This is one of the findings of economists at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), in their latest prediction of the state of the world economy in the coming months ( the World Economic Situations and Prospects mid-year update), which was released on 16 May.
Hamid Rashid, an economist at DESA and the lead author of the report, explained to Conor Lennon from UN News how nations can prosper from the cleaner energy future, and why the economy is still all suffering from a COVID-19 hangover.