As we speak, the UN Peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic, MINUSCA, is working around the clock outside of the town of Bambari to protect tens of thousands of civilians – many of whom are internally displaced – from encroaching rebel fighters. The religious and ethnic tensions in CAR coincided with the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. The international community’s reminder of the failures of the UN in Rwanda helped deploy a […]

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will require new ideas and new ways of thinking. Parallel to the 2017 World Government Summit in Dubai in February, the United Nations Foundation partnered with Dell to bring together over 30 policymakers, entrepreneurs, and NGO workers from 15 countries to develop and propose innovative solutions to global challenges. Participants were posed the overarching question: How can public policy promote entrepreneurship and advance the Sustainable Development Goals? Five teams came

The highly-anticipated second report of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, released this week at the UN, leaves no room for ambiguity: Empowering women as economic players is good to do, right to do, and smart to do. More than that, we know how to do it, and Leave No One Behind: Taking Action for Transformational Change on Women’s Economic Empowermentgives us a clear and compelling game plan. The report is enlivened by the conviction that

  Twitter posts, credit card purchases, phone calls, and satellites are all part of our day-to-day digital landscape. Detailed data, known broadly as “big data” because of the massive amounts of passively collected and high-frequency information that such interactions generate, are produced every time we use one of these technologies. These digital traces have great potential and have already developed a track record for application in global development and humanitarian response. Data2X has focused particularly on

By Zenia Tata, Executive Director, Global Expansion, XPRIZE On World Water Day, we are served a powerful reminder that water is life. Water is the universal link between human survival, our climate system, and sustainable global development. But a quick search on Google with the question, “Will earth ever run out of water?” will spring up an optimistic “never” in a matter of milliseconds. A check of the facts illustrates that planet Earth is covered with 71%

Solving global challenges requires knowledge of the issues and an exchange of ideas on how progress can be made. A number of reports have been released recently on issues from how climate change affects children to the economic opportunities of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Here are seven key reports we’re reading right now. Human Development Report 2016: Human Development for Everyone The UN Development Programme’s annual Human Development Report found that not everyone is

By Amna Adrees, United Nations Foundation Global Health Intern Eleanor Roosevelt is well known for her contributions to the United States. A strong advocate for civil rights for women, minorities, and other disadvantaged populations, she redefined what it meant to be the first lady of the United States. She pushed for U.S. involvement in the United Nations and remained deeply involved in the work done by UNA-USA throughout her career. What is less known about Eleanor Roosevelt,

This post was last updated October 15, 2018. In a world of abundant wealth and resources, where enough food is produced to feed everyone on the planet, it is unacceptable that hundreds of millions of people suffer from hunger. Right now, poverty, conflict, and climate change are contributing to hunger and suffering around the world. And in four countries – South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and northeastern Nigeria – 20 million people are facing severe food