Since October 2019, Lebanon has been witnessing a grim economic crisis that was compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. The national currency has lost 80 per cent of its value, driving the price of a monthly food basket – that is a selection of staple food items a family needs – to more than the double over the past six months. With one million people living below the poverty line, many families were already struggling to make ends meet.
It is often said that experience is the best teacher. As a UN Volunteer helping communicate complex environmental issues, my everyday challenge is to make nature relevant to people’s everyday experiences and needs.
Our experiences and immediate needs shape our outlook on life. However, biodiversity and environmental issues are often too complex and difficult to relate to. Most people, in their daily routines, live and work in cities, spending the bulk of their time indoors, surrounded by concrete walls and engulfed in a world that seems largely man-made.
I support a UNDP project on Integrated Landscape Management for Improved Livelihoods and Ecosystem Resilience in Mount Elgon. This aims to empower communities to manage their production landscapes in an integrated manner for improved livelihoods and ecosystem resilience.
In North East Nigeria, 7.1 million people are in need of urgent, life-saving humanitarian assistance in 2019, due to insurgency and climate crises. Many of them lost all their assets (internally displaced persons), some try to recover from the crises (returnees) and some are struggling to survive with food aid (host communities).
Tiruneh Debena reports that all these people are exposed to hunger, unable to ensure sustainable basic food needs for their families in the last nine years.
Over the course of the past five years, the UNMM has mobilized a cumulative total of 18 UN Volunteers to support the delivery of its mandate at the border between Turkey and Syria. UN Volunteer Thevanathan Nadesapillai (Sri Lanka) joined the UNMM in Turkey in June 2018 as a UN Volunteer Monitoring Officer. His assignment is to inspect the relief consignments that are loaded at the border and monitor their passage across the border.
M. Hayikou Euloge est Volontaire international des Nations Unies au Burundi depuis 2016. De nationalité béninoise, il est chargé de la logistique et de la gestion des stocks de vivres pour le Programme alimentaire mondial (PAM) au bureau de Ngozi. Il coordonne les activités liées à la gestion et à la qualité des vivres stockés dans des entrepôts d’une capacité de 8200 tonnes, avant leur acheminement vers les points de distribution.
This call closed on 9 June 2019. In March and April 2019, Southern Africa was hit by two subsequent cyclones that left a trail of damage and destruction in their path. In Zimbabwe, the floods burst rivers, and mudslides resulted in the loss of lives and livelihoods, severely damaging road networks, water points, bridges, irrigation schemes and electricity infrastructure. UNV is currently working to urgently recruit national and international UN Volunteers to support recovery initiatives by UNDP in Zimbabwe.
M. Hayikou Euloge est Volontaire international des Nations Unies au Burundi depuis 2016. De nationalité béninoise, il est chargé de la logistique et de la gestion des stocks de vivres pour le Programme alimentaire mondial (PAM) au bureau de Ngozi. Il coordonne les activités liées à la gestion et à la qualité des vivres stockés dans des entrepôts d’une capacité de 8200 tonnes, avant leur acheminement vers les points de distribution.
Mariagiovanna Costa is a UN Volunteer of Italian nationality serving at the sub-office of the World Food Program (WFP) in the Mopti region. She visits the internally displaced families of the ‘CAN 2002 Socoura’ camp, named after the former training football stadium of the African Cup of Nations.
A food crisis is affecting the region of Mopti, and Mali as a whole, due to drought and conflict which have displaced more than 99,000 people across the country. In Mopti, nearly 180,000 people suffer from food insecurity and more than 46,000 are internally displaced.