The world today faces a future that is in peril. Our challenges have become more complex and interconnected, as we see the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, an uneven economic recovery, a climate emergency, growing inequalities, and an increase in conflicts globally. This year also marks a grim milestone, with
over 100 million people forcibly displaced.
A landscape of shared global challenges
The COVID-19 pandemic has moved us farther away from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Data shows that the pandemic has pushed a further 124 million people into extreme poverty. Global poverty is now expected to be at 7% by 2030 – only marginally below the level in 2015. And with the global temperature increase already at 1.2 degrees, we are on the verge of the abyss. UN Secretary-General António Guterres is deeply concerned about the impact of the pandemic on the SDGs. But there is hope.
He believes in the knowledge, science, technology, and resources to turn it around. He also urges further financing for development and climate action.
China was one of the architects of the United Nations and was the first signatory of the UN Charter in San Francisco in 1945.
But it was only in October 1971, with the Chinese delegation led by Mr. Qiao Guanhua, that China’s representation at the UN resumed. Since that time, the UN has had the great privilege of witnessing and supporting China in achieving one of the greatest periods of socio-economic progress in world history.
Women hold up half the sky.
Some years ago, Sarah al-Amiri, a young Emirati engineer, had a fixed gaze beyond the sky and towards our galaxy. “Space was a sector that we never dared to dream growing up,” she noted.
Today is International Women’s Day (IWD), and the theme for this year’s celebration is
"Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world." We recognize the tremendous contribution and leadership demonstrated by women and girls around the world in shaping our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and a more sustainable future.
Back in the 1990s, the discovery of antiretrovirals offered a ray of hope to save people’s lives from the HIV epidemic. Over this decade, people living with HIV benefited from the scientific advances and began to have longer, healthier and more productive lives. However, almost all the beneficiaries were from rich countries in the global north. As a result, about nine million people died by the year 2000 due to the inequality in accessing these life-saving medicines.
COVID-19 is like a rainstorm, a thunderous and powerful rainstorm all over the world. If we didn’t know before, we certainly know now just where the holes are in our roofs, or where there are no roofs. We see ever more clearly who is getting drenched and who is dying, and who remains dry.
Happy New Year, Kenya.
Several milestones in my personal and professional life have made Kenya a cherished place for me. I started my UNICEF career in Rumbek, South Sudan in June 2000, and my rest and recuperation breaks were in Nairobi. In fact Kenya was the first African country I had ever visited and, frankly, it was love at first sight.
On 10 December every year, we celebrate Human Rights Day, marking the anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal Declaration guarantees a spectrum of human rights that belong to each of us equally, and unite us as a global community and upholds our humanity.
The United Nations Deputy Secretary General, Ms Amina Mohammed recently commended “
Kenya’s exemplary role in its response to COVID-19 and in advancing Agenda 2030”.
Amid various global conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s, the International Day of Peace (IDOP) was established to commemorate the strengthening of the ideals of peace globally. Today, peace is not just the absence of conflict, but a key prerequisite for development. It is in recognition of the crucial linkages between peace, respect for human rights and sustainable development that more than 36 indicators for peace were included across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Africa’s demographic boom has been hailed as its biggest promise for transforming the continent’s economic and social outcomes, but only if the right investments are made to prepare its youthful population for tomorrow’s world.
“The vision and promise of the United Nations is that food, healthcare, water and sanitation, education, decent work and social security are not commodities for sale to those who can afford them, but basic human rights to which we are all entitled.” Those were the poignant words of the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres,
in a hard hitting speech on 18 July 2020 to mark Mandela Day.
Consider this. 24 women, children and babies were murdered at a hospital in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Even by standards of a country as accustomed to bloodshed as Afghanistan, the May 12 attack on a
Kabul maternity clinic was an event of unmitigated horror.
We live in a different world to the one we inhabited six short months ago.
With more than 4 million people infected and over 280,000 dead globally by mid May 2020, Covid-19 has ruthlessly exposed the vulnerability of a globalised world to pandemic disease. People are slowly coming to terms with the frightening and heartbreaking death toll, and we are still not out of the danger.
The world commemorated the 75th Anniversary to mark the end of the 2nd World War also called VE Day on 08 May 2020.
With her nation, and much of the world still in lockdown due to COVID 19, England’s Queen marked 75 years since the allied victory in Europe with a poignant televised address. From Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth said, “the wartime generation knew that the best way to honour those who did not come back from the war, was to ensure that it didn’t happen again”.
Sexual and reproductive health and pandemics might seem to be unrelated topics, but large and dense populations are drivers of the high velocity transmission of COVID-19, and there are lessons to be learned for the future.
The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that now is “a defining moment for modern society. History will judge the efficacy of the response not by the actions of any single set of government actors taken in isolation, but by the degree to which the response is coordinated globally across all sectors for the benefit of our human family.”
Covid-19 infections continue to rise, bringing normal life to a virtualstandstill and causing countries to shut themselves off from the rest of the world.
Many soldiers have seen first-hand the horrors of war and, terrifying though it often was, they knew who they were fighting, and could recognise their enemy.
The number of coronavirus cases in Kenya has jumped to three after the government confirmed two more cases. President Uhuru Kenyatta
has announced a raft of proactive measures to prevent the spread of the virus.