UN – United Nations

With the world up against a growing list of problems without borders – from brutal conflicts to emerging health threats to rising hunger – the start of a new session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) provided a crucial forum for advancing progress for everyone, everywhere. As Secretary-General António Guterres said in his opening address to world leaders, despite falling levels of trust in global cooperation, “there is no way forward but collective, common-sense […]

If you care about women’s economic empowerment, we recommend paying close attention to the 20thInternational Conference on Labor Statisticians (ICLS). The 20thICLS kicks off this week in Geneva, Switzerland, and will run from October 10-19, bringing together 350 labor statisticians, policymakers, and researchers. To better understand why this gathering is so critical for women and their economic lives, we sat down with Emily Courey Pryor, Executive Director of Data2X– an alliance housed at the UN

Last week, Donna Strickland became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 55 years. While her well-deserved acknowledgement gives us a reason to celebrate her pioneering work in generating high-intensity laser pulses, a method used in modern LASIK eye surgery, her win also reflects a larger problem in society: women’s limited access to training in STEM fields, or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Strickland speaking at an Optical Society of America

When we talk about reproductive health and rights, we often talk about access to contraception. Indeed, access to and information about contraception is a foundation of realizing reproductive health and rights. But there is so much more in the equation – and what it all boils down to, in the end, is choice. Fully realizing reproductive health and rights means people can choose freely and for themselves the number of children they want, when they

On October 17, the Trump administration announced that it was leaving the Universal Postal Union (UPU), the UN organization that governs the traffic of worldwide international mail, unless certain reforms are enacted. Chief among the administration’s concerns: that the cost of delivering items from some foreign countries is subsidized, putting U.S. mailers at a disadvantage. Put another way, that means that it might be cheaper for a country like China to ship a small gadget

Editor’s note: This page was last updated February 20, 2019. “If you lose hope as a humanitarian, in any crisis or disaster, then you cannot serve the people who need your help.” —  Ms. Anjali Sen, UNFPA Representative to Yemen Yemen faces the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The dangers, according to Mark Lowcock, the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), are “much bigger than anything any professional

By Jordie Hannum, Executive Director of the Better World Campaign In the 1988 Italian film Cinema Paradiso, which won an Academy Award, young Salvatore Di Vita finds refuge from life in his war-torn Sicilian village by watching movies in the Cinema Paradiso movie house. The young Salvatore bonds with an older individual – the projectionist Alfredo – and their uncommon friendship shapes the young man’s life. Fast forward 30 years and nearly 1,400 hundred miles

A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) released this week reveals that 93% of all children live in places with air pollution levels above levels that are simply too high. And according to a recent study from George Washington University, one in three cases of asthma globally is tied to air pollution – that adds up to some 33 million visits to emergency rooms. These findings are timely as this week, the WHO,