UN Interviews

Dangerously high stress levels and widespread mental health challenges continue to take a devastating toll on civilians in Ukraine, particularly on women and girls, UN humanitarians warned on Friday.“It’s a terrifying dilemma: do we decide to stay and endure this pregnancy during this constant shelling, or do we uproot our entire life and leave?” says Ulla Muller from the UN sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA) in Ukraine, highlighting the situation confronting many women there today.To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, Ms. Muller talks to UN News’s Nathalie Minard about the “super women” of Ukraine who have been forced to give birth amid shelling – and to support their families and the wider economy – three years since the Russian full-scale invasion began.

Explosive ordnance continues to claim lives across Syria, with more than 500 people killed or reported injured since December, according to the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS).The long Syrian civil conflict which drew in multiple foreign forces in over a dozen years of fighting, has left a “devastating legacy of landmines and unexploded ordnance throughout the country”, affecting most of populated Syria, particularly in the northwest.Speaking from Damascus to UN News’s Khaled Mohamed, the Chief of the Mine Action Programme in Syria, Joseph McCartan, highlighted UNMAS’s efforts to address the contamination and deadly impact of unexploded ordnance in the country. 

From rising tides threatening coastal communities, to the urgent need for global energy transition, climate change is no distant crisis – it is a present reality.For young climate advocates like Fatou Jeng from The Gambia and Beniamin Strzelecki from Poland, the fight can be deeply personal. As they near the end of their tenure on the UN Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, they’ve been reflecting on what they’ve achieved.In this interview with UN News’ Pia Blondel, they discuss bridging grassroots activism and high-level policymaking – and share their advice for the next generation of advisers.

According to Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the Under-Secretary-General of Peace Operations, there are many good reasons for increasing the number of women peacekeepers in UN Missions.UN News’s Anshu Sharma spoke to Mr. Lacroix at the first-ever Conference for Women Peacekeepers, held in the Indian capital New Delhi on 24 and 25 February, where he was representing the United Nations.The Under-Secretary-General argued that changing the gender balance benefits the work environment in Peacekeeping Missions, improving conduct and discipline.Ms. Sharma began by asking him why it was important to make the trip to New Delhi, and what was achieved.

The bombs have stopped falling in the Gaza Strip but the humanitarian crisis there continues, said Tess Ingram, Communications Director and Spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF. Ms. Ingram was recently in Gaza, where boys and girls are barely getting their basic needs met.  They urgently need a scale-up in supplies and services, she said “and the ceasefire is a really good opportunity for us to do that.” She told UN News’s Nancy Sarkis that UNICEF and all humanitarians need the truce to hold so that they can save young lives. 

UN military observers oversee the ceasefires between Israel and Syria as well as Lebanon, in a preventative effort to head off isolated incidents that could escalate into another all-out war in the febrile region.The original observer mission mandated in 1948 is known as the UN Truce Supervision Organization, or UNTSO, which also advises the other UN peacekeeping forces in the Middle East: the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in Syria and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).Major General Patrick Gauchat, Head of UNTSO, told UN News that it is necessary to have “everyone working on guaranteeing the temporary becomes long-term”.Operating in a buffer zone between Israel and its two neighbours, Major General Gauchat explained in an interview with Nathalie Minard that the situation in the region continues to be complex and challenging.

Underlying the importance of a collective responsibility to support all those impacted by seismic events in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and beyond – stemming from the war between Israel and Hamas – the head of the UN Office for Project Services, has told UN News this is a “defining moment for the Middle East”.Calling on all UN agencies to scale up and the international community to mobilize, Jorge Moreira da Silva added that it is fundamental to “bring all humanitarian aid that is needed”.As Executive Director of the UN agency which literally builds better lives for millions around the world, Mr. Moreira da Silva is on a week-long evaluation mission in the Middle East, including visits to Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.He spoke to UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki from Syria and started by telling him about his team’s crucial role. 

Globally, 122 million girls are out of school, according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).  Of those, 2.5 million are banned from education in Afghanistan.Somaya Faruqi, former captain of the Afghan Girls Robotics Team – known as the Afghan Dreamers – and now an Education Cannot Wait Global Champion, gained international recognition for her engineering achievements before being forced to flee her homeland when the Taliban took power in 2021.Ahead of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, she spoke with UN News’s Pia Blondel about the stark reality of studying engineering in the United States while many of her peers back home have been forced into marriage and denied an education. 

Combatants for Peace, a grassroots organization made up of Palestinian and Israeli peace advocates, has consistently called for dialogue between the two communities for two decades, even during the brutal months of the Gaza war.Mai Shahin, a Palestinian therapist and Elik Elhanan, a teacher in New York both, at one time, took part in acts of violence. On a visit to UN Headquarters in New York in late January, they told Conor Lennon from UN News that the recent conflict has intensified their belief that communication is the only way to achieve peace.

If the international community is able to effectively put in place the ethical and practical guidelines proposed by UNESCO and others, AI has the potential to be an extremely important part of an educator’s toolkit. But the introduction of this technology is just one part of a much wider philosophical discussion about the effectiveness of education in general in a world that many believe is about to upended by increasingly powerful AI-powered applications.Conor Lennon from UN News asked Matthew Rascoff, Vice Provost for Digital Education at Stanford University, to give his take on the role of education in today’s world, after a keynote speech on AI and education delivered at UNHQ in late January 2025.