They defend the vulnerable and fight for human rights. They command forces and build coalitions for peace. And they take on the world’s toughest challenges. Women now make up half of the senior leadership team of the United Nations. Throughout the organization, from field operations to headquarters, women are leading the way in solving problems and creating change. They are our heroes. Or, as we say, (s)heroes. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has made gender equity […]

The ambitious transformation of the World Health Organization (WHO) took a huge step forward on March 6. Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced major organizational changes aimed at aligning processes and structures to reach WHO’s “triple billion” targets by 2023: Ensuring that 1 billion more people benefit from universal health coverage; 1 billion more people have better protection from health emergencies; and 1 billion more people enjoy better health and well-being. When Dr. Tedros first

The world is up against a multitude of environmental challenges — from climate change to biodiversity loss to plastic pollution — and we’re running out of time to tackle them. This week, the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) released the sixth edition of the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO6), its flagship report that provides the first comprehensive assessment on the state of our environment since 2012. Similar to the climate change reports from the Intergovernmental

In a world of division, young people are standing up for collective action. On March 15, thousands of young people in more than 100 countries and 1,600 cities and towns will take to the streets to march for greater ambition and urgent action around climate change. Part of their rallying cry is to push global leaders to uphold their commitments on the Paris Climate Agreement, signed by 196 countries back in 2015. Sparked by 16-year-old

Washington may be divided, but Americans across the country agree on the importance of the United Nations. According to polling from the Better World Campaign, the majority of Americans recognize the impact of the UN and support strong U.S. engagement. In fact, more than 1,800 people representing 45 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico recently traveled to the UN Headquarters in New York to show their support at the 2019 Global Engagement Summit. The annual

Editor’s note: This post was last updated March 27, 2019. A strong cyclone that hit southeastern Africa has caused widespread damage and dangerous flooding, leaving more than 1.8 million people in need in Mozambique. The storm may be one of the worst weather-related disasters ever to hit the Southern Hemisphere. Photo: Weather.com Cyclone Idai made landfall in Mozambique on March 14, before moving into the neighboring countries of Zimbabwe and Malawi as a Tropical Storm. An

When I began working on tuberculosis (TB) four years ago, it seemed like an insurmountable global challenge that hardly anyone was paying attention to. At the outset of my career, I honestly didn’t even know it was still a major public health problem around the world. Even now, as a firmly entrenched global health professional, I see that TB only gets a fraction of the attention of diseases that kill far fewer people. Many in

Felisa Hilbert was a young nurse when she first held a dying child in her arms. She was working at a small rural health clinic in Mexico, her native country, when a young woman arrived carrying her sick son. It had taken three hours on a bus for this mother to reach the clinic. By the time they arrived, the boy was fatally ill and beyond saving. “His little body was lifeless when his mother

Two and half years ago, Charlie Webster thought she was going to die. The British journalist had just completed a five-week, 3,000-mile charity bike ride from London to Rio de Janeiro to commemorate the 2016 Olympic Games when she came down with an illness that baffled local doctors and left her on life support. At one point, doctors told her family that she had less than 24 hours to live. Webster’s dire condition and the