UN Interviews

Syrians are “experiencing the taste of freedom” for the first time in decades, according to the top official in the Middle East region from the UN human rights office, OHCHR.Mohammad Al Nasour visited the country this week for the first time in years after being repeatedly denied access by the fallen Assad regime.The Middle East and North Africa section chief spoke to UN News’s Ezzat El-Ferri from Damascus on Wednesday and highlighted the contribution OHCHR can make to democratic change in a country where people are “determined to have a future that includes fundamental freedoms”.

As deadly wildfires continue to burn in Los Angeles, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is highlighting the need for more action on prevention globally.This is particularly critical as the climate crisis and changes in land use increase the intensity, frequency and duration of wildfires, which occur on practically every continent.To find out more, UN News’s Dianne Penn has been speaking to Amy Duchelle, FAO Senior Forestry Officer and Team Leader on Forests and Climate. 

In Syria, unexploded ordinance is the deadliest threat faced by children today – a legacy of the country’s 14-year war – the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.Speaking from Damascus, the UN agency’s Communication Manager for Emergencies, Ricardo Pires, said more than 300,000 mines are still spread across the country, according to estimates. “The threat is very real for children,” he told UN News’s Daniel Johnson. Some parts of country are “fully contaminated with these deadly devices,” while kids are simply unaware of the dangers – which can “end in tragedy.”Here’s Mr. Pires now, explaining why it is so important for the international community to take urgent action to prevent more deaths and life-changing injuries. 

At a time when online hate speech and misinformation are on the rise, one of the missions of the UN education and culture agency UNESCO, has been to propose pathways for more effective social media platform governance.It’s crucial for tech companies to gear policies towards a comprehensive system with one main goal – “the protection and promotion of all human rights for everyone”.That’s the view of Guilherme Canela, Chief of Freedom of Expression and Safety for Journalists at UNESCO, who will be in San Francisco next week for discussions with executives of tech companies and social media platforms.Ahead of that he spoke to UN News’s Felipe de Carvalho and highlighted the importance of fact-checking to safeguard freedom of expression. 

Celebrations continue in Syria a month after the fall of the Assad regime, but at the same time, citizens also have high hopes for their homeland.That’s the message from the UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria, Najat Rochdi, speaking on Friday from the capital, Damascus.In this exclusive interview with UN News’s Reem Abaza, she discusses the Syrian people’s desire for a more inclusive future, the main challenges facing the country, and the UN’s ongoing support amid ‘a completely new reality’. 

A UN-led mass vaccination campaign in underway in northeast Syria’s notorious Al Hol camp complex to protect the nearly 40,000 people being detained there from a cholera outbreak.For years, Al Hol has housed Syrians, Iraqis and other third country nationals linked to – or impacted by – the country’s long civil war, which ended with the ousting of President Bashar al Assad in late November.Among those being held are hundreds of family members of alleged terrorist fighters from ISIL and other groups.With more on the campaign, which has been happening with the blessing of Damascus’s caretaker authorities and local administrators in northeast Syria, Khourchid Hassan – a health and nutrition officer with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) – has been speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

The global gaming industry – now five times larger than Hollywood with a value of $196 billion – faces growing security challenges as violent extremist groups increasingly exploit gaming platforms to reach people across borders.Earlier this month, experts from the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT), in partnership with the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), hosted an event to explore the intersection of gaming and violent extremism.Speaking to UN News’s Sarah Daly, Steven Siqueira, Deputy Director of UNOCT, and Acting Director of UNICRI, Leif Villadsen, discussed how they are joining forces with gaming companies, policymakers and researchers to combat extremism in the digital space. Read the full story here. 

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has not solved the country’s massive humanitarian emergency, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) insisted on Thursday, with some two million sheltering in the northwest unable to go back to villages and cities shattered by 14 years of war.In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, the agency’s regional chief of communications and advocacy in the Middle East, Ammar Ammar, has been describing the dramatic scenes he saw, while on mission this week to Damascus, Aleppo, Hama and Homs.He began with an update on Tishreen Dam in northern Syria, scene of clashes between Kurdish groups of the Syrian Democratic Forces and pro-Turkish elements of the Free Syrian Army.

At a historic crossroads, less than two weeks after the collapse of the Assad regime, Syria is slowly “coming back from the brink” and its citizens must “find a way of moving forward together to build a future for the country”.That’s according to veteran human rights expert and humanitarian, Hanny Megally of Egypt, who serves as a Commissioner with the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.He told UN News’s Khaled Mohamed that Syrians need to “rebuild their lives, their homes, and restore some level of security and safety within the country."

A new series of reported Israeli airstrikes and clashes in multiple sites across Gaza at the weekend killed dozens of civilians and left others facing life-changing injuries, UN humanitarians said on Monday.In one attack in the southern city of Khan Younis, a school was hit, even though it is run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and was sheltering families uprooted by the conflict.There were multiple fatalities, as UNRWA Senior Emergency Officer Louise Wateridge tells UN News’s Daniel Johnson from a health centre in Khan Younis, describing devastating scenes that have become a daily reality.