Living in the metaverse: UN goes virtual for the public good

Around four in 10 countries where conflicts have ended return to a state of war within a decade, which is why investing in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration is crucial to sustaining peace.That was one of the key messages from the UN Department of Peace Operations (DPO) and UN Development Programme (UNDP) at this year’s Symposium on Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration which was held in Geneva.To find out more, UN News’ Nathalie Minard spoke to Thomas Kontogeorgos, an expert on the issue based at DPO. She asked him about the situation in Haiti, DRC, Mali and Sudan – and what support the UN still provides to countries once peacekeeping missions come to an end.

When the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), released its annual report on global trends in June, it showed, for the twelfth year in a row, record numbers of displacement, around 120 million people.Conflict remains the key factor behind the figures, and the report noted that the climate crisis is often a driver of that conflict.On the ground, in the countries particularly affected, the UN is working closely with governments and civil society to support development, in the face of these problems, so that people can lead peaceful lives and no longer need to leave home.Conor Lennon from UN News spoke to Mohamed Fall, the UN Resident Coordinator in Nigeria, about the deep impact the climate crisis is making on the population.

War-torn Sudan is facing a looming famine and the world’s largest displacement crisis as the conflict between rival militaries that started last April grinds on and the situation deteriorates on the ground. UN News’s Khaled Mohamed spoke with Justin Brady, who leads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the country.Speaking from Port Sudan, where most aid agencies are now based, Mr. Brady warned that “the images starting to come out from some areas are reminiscent of the worst of any famine we have seen elsewhere” and described the tense situation in El Fasher and other hotspots around the country, stressing that “we’re in a race against time, but the time is running out.”

More than 60 elections are taking place in 2024 and, whilst 90 per cent of people say they want to live in a democracy, many are voting for people and systems that are restricting their rights.The UN has expressed concern about this “democracy paradox”, and that fact that some governments and governance systems are becoming increasingly repressive. Conor Lennon from UN News discusses the issue with Sarah Lister, the Head of Governance at the UN Development Programme, and Iain Walker, the CEO of newDemocracy.

Each year on 20 June, the world celebrates World Refugee Day with forced displacement surging to historic new levels across the globe, according to the 2024 flagship Global Trends Report from refugee agency UNHCR.UN News’s Pauline Batista sat down with UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Mary Maker from South Sudan, at UN Headquarters in New York, who discussed the importance of education and inclusion for refugees to ensure the mantra “leave no one behind” becomes a reality – especially in refugee camps around the world.

The resilience of women-led organizations to continue working across Gaza to benefit their communities is “an inspiration”, the Special Representative for UN Women in the region said on Wednesday in an interview with UN News.Maryse Guimond from the Palestine Office of the UN agency advocating for gender equality described her first mission to the war-stricken enclave since before hostilities began and outlined how they are collaborating with other agencies, providing resources suck as food, dignity kits and psychosocial support.She told Abdelmonem Makki the women-led organizations UN Women has been supporting are “key responders”, many of whom have been displaced multiple times themselves during the ongoing conflict. He first asked her to describe what she’d seen on the ground.

Some 3.2 billion people, or almost one third of the global population, are affected by desertification and land loss according to the UN’s most senior official dealing with the issue.The loss of land through drought and desertification, which is being driven, in part, by climate change, can have huge impacts on agriculture, development, migration and national and regional economies and sometimes leads to conflict.Ibrahim Thiaw is the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).Daniel Dickinson spoke to him ahead of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, marked annually on 17 June and began by asking him where the fight to hold back desertification should begin.

It has now been over 1,000 days since the Taliban, the de facto authorities in Afghanistan, banned education for girls beyond sixth grade, a figure described by the Executive Director of the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, as “a blatant violation of their right to education” resulting in “dwindling opportunities and deteriorating mental health”.To raise awareness and support Afghan Girls, Education Cannot Wait, the global fund for education in emergencies and crises, has launched a new phase of its Afghan Girls Voices campaign, featuring inspiring works from some of the world’s leading artists.Many prominent voices are supporting the campaign, including the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, and former UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who told Conor Lennon from UN News that the thousand day milestone was a “day of shame”.

The UN’s digital technology agency (ITU) launches ‘UN Virtual Worlds Day’ on Friday a pioneering event designed to integrate the metaverse – ‘an integrated ecosystem of virtual worlds’ – to improve how societies and governance work to greater benefit the public. Virtual reality offers new opportunities for reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ITU experts believe, and the broader UN community sees tangible benefits if it’s used wisely.In an interview with UN News’ Anton Uspensky, Cristina Bueti, the ITU Focal Point on Smart Sustainable Cities and Counsellor for the Focus Group on the metaverse, explains how new technologies can improve lives, and help crack some intractable problems. 

Nuclear power has been a source of optimism and fear since the mid-Twentieth Century. On one hand, it evokes the destructive power of nuclear bombs, the catastrophic explosion of Chernobyl, the Fukushima disaster or, more recently Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Europe’s largest, which has come under fire since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.But the image of nuclear power got a boost at the end of 2023, at the COP28 UN Climate Conference in Dubai. The 198 countries represented at the conference included nuclear energy in the list of low-emission technologies that need to be scaled up, if we are to succeed in decarbonizing our economies. In addition, 22 countries committed to tripling nuclear power capacity by 2050. Earlier I spoke to Rafael Mariano Grossi, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and asked him if he thinks nuclear is likely to become more popular and mainstream as an energy source in coming years.