When more than 125 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, it’s clear the international community must do more to end suffering and strengthen resilience. Behind this number are real people – mothers like Inas who fled Syria with her daughters and now relies on food aid to feed her family and couples like Ibrahim and Hauna who married in a refugee camp after being forced to leave their homes in Nigeria because of extremists. What […]

Last week, the crisis in Mali once again landed into front page news. Tragically, the headline remains the same: Terror groups target UN Peacekeepers. On Wednesday, May 18, a UN Peacekeeping convoy hit an improvised explosive device and later came under fire from armed assailants. This horrific attack killed five peacekeepers and injured three others from the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). Wednesday’s attack was unfortunately not an isolated incident. In fact,

What does donning a red nose have to do with helping children around the world? Thursday, May 26 is Red Nose Day, a campaign dedicated to getting “seriously silly” to raise awareness and funds to help children in need. Red Nose Day has raised over $1 billion globally in the last 25 years – now that is seriously amazing.  Red Nose Day in the United States supports 12 charities including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an organization

“We are one humanity, with a shared responsibility. Let us resolve here and now not only to keep people alive, but to give people a chance at life in dignity.” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke those words to open the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit, which took place May 23-24 and included 9,000 participants from across the world and across sectors. They represented over 170 countries and came from UN agencies, aid organizations, governments, businesses, faith groups,

“The summit is a way of saying let’s come together, let’s really understand how we can work better”– Stephen O’Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator The World Humanitarian Summit has come to a close in Istanbul. The summit occurred at time in our history when there is a population in need of humanitarian assistance bigger than the number of people living Italy and the UK combined. The summit established a bold agenda—bringing with

Dr. La Vonne Downey is third from left. Who are the people that power our work helping the United Nations build a safer, healthier, more peaceful world? Meet Dr. La Vonne Downey, an academic in the health field, a Champion for the United Nations Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign, and the latest participant in our “Supporter Spotlight” series. In this role, she helps the campaign support UN efforts to expand access to global childhood vaccines that protect children

As the dust of excitement around recent big events like the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals agenda, the signing of the climate change agreement, and the just concluded Women Deliver conference settles a little and we get down to the hard work of making all these exciting goals achievable, I am brought back to the centrality of one particular activity that was very popular a decade and two ago, but now risks becoming just one more thing

Nearly one year ago, I had the opportunity to march in the San Francisco Pride Parade just after the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling affirming a constitutional right to equal marriage for same-sex couples across the United States, which happened at the same time that the United Nations was celebrating the signing of the UN Charter 70 years earlier in San Francisco. It was a unique moment in my personal and professional life, as I celebrated marriage equality