Environmental issues and sustainable development

Jayathma Wickramanayake, the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, and The Body Shop, launched a campaign today that seeks to get young voices into the halls of power.  The campaign, “Be Seen, Be Heard”, seeks to create long-term structural changes that will make decision-making more inclusive of young people and ensure their participation in political life.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message to the pledging event on the FSO Safer, at The Hague today:

Discussion in the Forum on Forests today was dominated by proposals to support the functioning of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests — a voluntary arrangement among 14 international organizations dedicated to improving the sustainable management, conservation and trade of forest-based products around the world.

Despite an overall decrease in violence against civilians in South Sudan, cases of conflict-related sexual violence more than doubled between January and March, a new report issued by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).  It documented 63 cases during that period, up from 28 in the corresponding time period last year.

Senegal’s armed forces were approved today to receive funding from the Elsie Initiative Fund to assess barriers to the participation of women in United Nations peace operations.  Senegal is the sixteenth largest troop-contributing country and has 987 personnel deployed as of February 2022, of whom 38, or 3.8 per cent, are women.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message to the high-level virtual meeting of the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative for Accelerated Implementation of the 2030 Agenda, held today:

Home to 80 per cent of all terrestrial species and hailed as “the lungs of the planet” for their ability to generate oxygen, forests hold boundless potential to help solve the most pressing global challenges, speakers in the United Nations Forum on Forests stressed today, as they offered alternatives to the many activities threatening their health, from logging and oil exploration to well-intentioned but ill-conceived conservation efforts.

Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s remarks at the Head of States meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNCCD) COP15 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, today:

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which chairs the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, presented this year’s Wangari Maathai Forest Champions Award to activist Cécile Ndjebet of Cameroon.

In Haiti, clashes resumed between gangs in Port-au-Prince, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  In the commune of Croix-des-Bouquets, violence has displaced more than 1,200 people.  Dozens of houses were burned and a hospital in Marin was looted.