UN Catch-Up Dateline Geneva: Heart-breaking loss in drought-hit Horn of Africa, record food price alert

In this week’s podcast, aboriginal art custodians from the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia come all the way to Geneva to tell us they’re facing cultural genocide, while in Haiti, gang violence is creating a serious problem for UN relief teams. Across Africa, we find out why there’s serious concern about the spread of animal-to-human disease, and in the Philippines, a court ruling on Press freedom hero and Nobel winner, Maria Ressa, has sparked alarm from one leading human rights expert.

This week’s top stories include action at the Human Rights Council on Eritrea, Myanmar and a push for all countries to take early action to stop violence against women and girls. In Ukraine, UN Refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi has been offering support to communities devastated by the Russian invasion, and we’ll also hear the latest hard-hitting findings of the UN Fact-Finding Mission in Libya.

It’s been an intense week of face-to-face meetings in Geneva - just like the good old days, before COVID…Among the top stories we’ve been covering, there’s been grim but important news from Ethiopia and Syria in the Human Rights Council, a moving update from UN humanitarians in Ukraine, and significant progress towards holding elections in Libya - although they’re still proving elusive. In Afghanistan, communities are still struggling to recover, a week after last week’s deadly earthquake – and we’ll be hearing from a UN Children’s Fund worker who’s been to see the human impact for herself.

In this week’s show, the UN ramps up aid for eastern Afghanistan, where communities are reeling after its deadliest earthquake in decades. In Nigeria, the humanitarian crisis in the northeast still needs all our attention, as we’ll hear aid chief Matthias Schmale – but it’s far from the only place where that’s the case, according to a new UNICEF alert. And in Ukraine, the targeting of cultural treasures must stop, says UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay.

UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet has been particularly busy this week, as the Human Rights Council 50th session got underway in Geneva. She’s spoken about her visit to China and also issued alerts on the devastated Ukrainian city of Mariupol. This week the world celebrated albinism awareness day, and to find out more, we’ll be hearing from Harry Freeland, director of a powerful documentary filmed among people living with the rare genetic condition in Tanzania, In The Shadow Of The Sun.

Four failed rainy seasons in the Horn of Africa, are tearing families apart –we hear one veteran humanitarian’s heart-breaking testimony from a displacement camp in Somalia.

Climate shocks are also playing their part in undermining vital investment in developing countries, according to trade agency UNCTAD, and we’ll also hear that food prices are going to be increasingly difficult to stomach this year, as millions of people in Sri Lanka – in the midst of its worst crisis since independence - are already finding out. 

Having a stroke is something many of us associate with older people, but that’s not always the case, as we find out, in this week’s interview with a courageous stroke activist who’s been telling staff at UN Geneva how he managed to learn to speak again. In Yemen, the UN migration agency IOM, has issued a warning about the tens of thousands of migrants from Africa who continue to be trafficked, shot or worse; in Geneva, North Korea’s missile tests have prompted strong words at the UN’s top disarmament forum; while 100 days of war in Ukraine have had predict ably awful results for most of the country’s youngsters. Last but not least, we’ll also hear a potentially promising COVID immunity update from the WHO.

In this week’s show, monkeypox has been dominating the headlines, and we’ll have the latest from the World Health Organization. Also, the link between despair and poor mental health couldn’t be clearer in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the UN Relief and Works Agency tells us, while in the world of work, the ILO reckons that we’ve lost well over 112 million full-time jobs globally, since the COVID pandemic began.

There’s far more positive news from agriculture agency FAO, that’s been working with herders in Ethiopia, Kenya and beyond, to offer a brighter future than cattle raiding.

In this week’s show, ever-deepening concerns about life in Afghanistan where the national rights body is no more, while in Mexico, more than 100,000 people are now officially disappeared. Stay with us too, if you can stand the heat, for a climate update from UN meteorologists - no spoiler alert necessary - and also for an inspiring interview with Cameroon women’s land rights activist, Cécile Ndjebet, who’s just won the Wangari Maathai Forest Champions Award.

This week we spotlight the Human Rights Council’s special session on atrocities happening in Ukraine, post Russia’s invasion. We’ll also be heading to Afghanistan for the latest alarming UN assessments on food insecurity there, and to the Occupied West Bank - after the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh - and to DPR Korea, where health agency WHO, is committed to do help stop the spread of COVID-19. We also have some good news about successful malaria vaccine pilot schemes in Africa, which could save tens of thousands of children’s lives.