Increasing access to basic social services

In East and Southern Africa, the achievement of SDG 3 is particularly crucial. According to WHO, Sub-Saharan Africa “confronts the world’s most dramatic public health crisis”.  Mortality among children under 5 years of age remains high, with a rate of 84 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2015. The incidence of HIV infection is still highest in sub-Saharan Africa, with 1.5 new infections per 1,000 uninfected people in 2015. In 2016, sub-Saharan Africa was home to 90 per cent of malaria cases and 91 per cent of malaria deaths.

International Women’s Day 2018 revolves around the theme “Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives”– women going on the streets, women fighting in their communities, women coming together for their rights. This is happening as much in big capitals of the world as in small communities and villages.

In 2014, national authorities in CAR decided to establish a Special Criminal Court (SCC) to investigate and prosecute serious human rights violations, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. The law on the creation of the Court was promulgated on the 3 June 2015. It demonstrated strong political willingness to end impunity and the importance of equality, justice and freedom in achieving sustainable peace.  

UN Women and UN Volunteers launched a community-focused radio project in Quetta, Pakistan, in 2017. The aim of this project was to empower women through community focused-radio and volunteerism. It engaged marginalized women and youth in two towns, and established establish community-based radio programmes for entertainment, information and education purposes.

"Voices Against Violence" in Togo is an $85,000 USD project that was funded and implemented by the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme between October 2016 and April 2017.  The project is based on an informal education program developed by the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and UN Women.  It aims to fight against gender-based violence by raising the awareness of young secondary students about the root causes of violence, ways to prevent it, and finding solutions.

Since the ambitious group of young women and young men was brought together in June 2016, UNV and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are supporting the network of youth and volunteers by facilitating knowledge-sharing and assisting young leaders to engage in regional and national initiatives. Throughout the initiative, UNDP and UNV have organized capacity-building webinars, arranged opportunities for young leaders to share their opinions in multi-stakeholder conferences at regional and country-level, and collaborated in online and offline activities. 

The main causes of forest and land degradation in the country include deforestation, inappropriate agricultural practices, forest fires, over-grazing and demographic pressures. A survey conducted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) reported that the annual deforestation rate between 2003 and 2010 had been 1.73 per cent. If this alarming trend were to persist, 17.3 per cent of the forest in the country would disappear by 2021 and all forests in Timor-Leste by 2071.

On the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the UN pays homage to the victims of hunger and social exclusion to encourage multilateral partnerships that are based on solid, compassionate responses to their struggles. Poverty has numerous repercussions: hunger and food insecurity, increased crime and child mortality rates, political instability, corruption and dysfunctional governance. We are seeing now that poverty is a prime driver of violent extremism, breeding and intensifying conflicts worldwide.

The majority of these suspects had been held in pre-trial detention since 2015, when the terrorist attacks committed by Boko Haram ravaged the Diffa region, in the east of the country, by the border with Nigeria "I have seen how the work of a volunteer brings a glimmer of hope in the eyes of prisoners," says Ali*, UN Volunteer for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Niger.