UN – United Nations

By Ambassador Peter Thomson, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean  With every year that passes, our ocean action work becomes ever more vital in the truest sense of that word. As a direct result of planetary warming caused by human activities, ocean temperatures are increasing alarmingly, sea level rise is accelerating, marine ecosystems are undergoing inexorable change, and coral is dying.  Since the health of the ocean is absolutely fundamental to the wellbeing of […]

International Women’s Day at 50: Strides, Setbacks, and Solidarity | unfoundation.org Fifty years after the United Nations first commemorated International Women’s Day, what has changed for girls and women? We’re taking stock of the strides and the setbacks. The year was 1975, and a movement was growing. Led by and for women, the global women’s movement had reached a momentous new milestone after decades of activism. Thousands of feminists from around the world were heading

YEAR IN REVIEW: THE EVENTS THAT SHAPED THE UN AND OUR WORLD IN 2024 | unfoundation.org BlogBlog SeriesYEAR IN REVIEW: THE EVENTS THAT SHAPED THE UN AND OUR WORLD IN 2024 Protesters call on world leaders to take urgent action at a climate march in Turin, Italy in October 2024. Photo: Mauro Ujetto/NurPhoto via Getty Images 2024 was a year of historic highs and troubling lows, from diplomatic breakthroughs like the Pact for the Future

5 GLOBAL ISSUES TO WATCH IN 2025 | unfoundation.org Children in the war-torn city of Borodyanka, Ukraine, play near an apartment building that was destroyed by Russian shelling. Since 2022, the war in Ukraine has been escalating. Photo: Sergei Chuzavkov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Catastrophic conflicts. Climate chaos. Staggering human rights losses. A fraught 2025 will still need to deliver on an ambitious global agenda. And it will set the backdrop for the UN’s 80th

Five Ways to Scale Up Climate Adaptation Finance at COP 29 – and Beyond | unfoundation.org A woman carries supplies through a flooded street in Cap Haïtien after intense flooding in northern Haiti left more than a dozen dead and displaced thousands. Photo: UN Photo/Logan Abassi As the impacts of climate change intensify, calls for increased financing to help countries adapt are gaining momentum. The UN Climate Change Conference represents the first of several upcoming

Pact Decoded: Imagine a Future if World Leaders Get It Right | unfoundation.org BlogYouthPact Decoded: Imagine a Future if World Leaders Get It Right Our Future Agenda’s Pact Decoded breaks down the key agreements made by world leaders at the Summit of the Future and UNGA 79 — and represents an opportunity to rekindle hope and optimism for the future. Illustration: Janice Chang At the UN Foundation, we believe that staying informed is the first

By UN Women Deputy Executive Director Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda In a global context where less than 30 per cent of parliamentary seats are held by women, 44 per cent of the world’s population live in countries holding presidential and parliamentary elections this year. Only two countries going to the polls in 2024, Mexico and Rwanda, have equal parliamentary representation of women and men. Harmful social norms and gender-based stereotypes perpetuate the idea that the leadership and

The Summit of the Future — My Thoughts on What’s Next | unfoundation.org BlogUNGAThe Summit of the Future — My Thoughts on What’s Next UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivers remarks at the Summit of the Future Action Days. Photo: UN / Loey Felipe World leaders at the UN’s Summit of the Future adopted three foundational agreements to safeguard our future for generations to come, capping arduous negotiations. Imperfect but important, the Pact for the Future,

By Minh-Thu Pham, Co-founder and CEO, Project Starling Despite being an inherently political institution, the United Nations is not a place where we like to talk about politics – at least explicitly. And yet politics – which determines how our societies are governed, what the rules are, who determines them, and how we manage relations – plays a major role in whether we solve problems together and achieve the aims laid out in ambitious UN