English Media

Press Conference by UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed on the Eve of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4)

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Category: English Media

Published: Thursday, 26 June 2025 17:48

Written by Eager

المؤتمر الصحفي لنائبة الأمين العام للأمم المتحدة، أمينة محمد، عشية انعقاد المؤتمر الدولي الرابع لتمويل التنمية (FFD4)"

The UN Secretary-General welcomes the exhibition of the original Charter of the United Nations at UN Headquarters.

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Category: English Media

Published: Tuesday, 24 June 2025 15:55

Written by Eager

Celebrity Media Editor's Note:The Charter of the United Nations, as the founding document of the UN, not only laid the legal foundation for the international order but also embodies the shared aspirations of all nations for peace, security, and cooperation. The exhibition of the original Charter at UN Headquarters marks a solemn and historically significant moment. The UN Secretary-General's personal welcome of the Charter’s arrival reflects the deep respect for and commitment to its enduring principles. This exhibition not only allows the world to revisit the solemn promise of the Charter but also serves as a reminder of the continued efforts needed to achieve the UN’s goals of peace, development, and human rights.。

Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed home the original UN Charter, 80 years after it was adopted.

Speaking at a ceremony Monday (23 Jun), the Secretary-General said that the Charter is “more than parchment and ink; it is a promise — of peace, dignity and cooperation among nations.”

Guterres also said, “as we open this exhibition that celebrates our earliest days, we are reminded that the Charter was only the beginning. The ideals it enshrined had to be put into action — by people, by process, and sometimes, by something as simple as a wooden box.”

“Eighty years is a blink of an eye in history. And yet, until the United Nations, humanity never had a single place where every government and all peoples could unite to fix the world and build something better,” the Secretary-General said.

He continued, “The UN is a living miracle — and the women and men of the United Nations bring this miracle to life every day and everywhere: Forging peace. Tackling poverty, hunger, and disease. Advancing human rights. Delivering lifesaving aid. And striving to make our organization stronger.”

As our world faces age-old challenges, and newer threats like the climate crisis and runaway technology, we have the tools and the norms

Chair of the UN80 Working Group, Guy Ryder: "Making the United Nations Better and Stronger"

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Category: English Media

Published: Thursday, 26 June 2025 09:34

Written by Eager

Celebrity Media Editor's Note: Commemorating the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations holds profound and significant meaning, especially in light of the complex and multifaceted challenges facing the world today. This milestone is not only a reflection on the efforts made by the UN since its establishment in 1945, but also a renewed call to strengthen and redefine its mission for the future.

The UN’s 80th anniversary is more than just a historical landmark — it is a crucial moment for unity, transformation, and hope. It reminds us that only through consensus and cooperation can humanity rise to meet our shared global challenges and build a more just, peaceful, and sustainable future.

Guy Ryder, Chair of the UN’s 80th Anniversary Special Task Force, provided a comprehensive and insightful explanation of the UN80’s initiatives in an interview with Laura Quiñones. He emphasized that these efforts aim to “make the United Nations better and stronger,” and ensure it is “capable of effectively responding to the multiple challenges it faces.”

The Chair of the UN80 Task Force, Guy Ryder, said the objective of the initiative is “to make the UN better, to make it stronger,” and to enable the Organization “to respond effectively to the multiple challenges that are out there.”

As the United Nations marks its 80th anniversary this year amid overlapping global challenges – ranging from conflict, displacement, and inequality to climate shocks and rapid technological change – Ryder told UN NEWS’ Laura Quiñones that, “an eighty-year anniversary is a good time to take a look at yourself and see how fit for purpose we are, in a set of circumstances which, let's be honest, are quite challenging for multilateralism and for the UN.”

He said, “sometimes it's bad to define something by what it is not. But this is not simply a cost cutting, downsizing effort. Yes, we do face financial challenges. No need to avert our eyes from that. But we want to come out of this stronger. We want to see what we can do better.”

At the heart of UN80 are three major workstreams. The first is focused on improving internal efficiency, reducing fragmentation, cutting red tape, and optimizing the UN’s global footprint.

Ryder said, “we're looking at efficiencies and improvements within our existing institution arrangements. So, we are looking at ways that we can, as I've said, remove duplications; relocations of staff and functions is part of the story. We can make gains from moving from higher costs to lower cost locations. We can look at our business processes. Many of us who work in the system find the bureaucracies a little bit heavy, sometimes, a little bit frustrating. Why not look at those obstacles and try and move them away?”

The second workstream is a mandate implementation review, which involves examining nearly 4,000 mandates underpinning the UN’s work for 2025 alone. The third stream explores whether even deeper structural changes and programme realignment are needed across the UN System.

The UN80 Chair said, “we're looking at the substance of what we do, the mandates that we implement. So, it's the what as well as the how. And eventually, you know, we might want to look at the architecture of the United Nations system, at the different structures we have in place, which have grown over eight decades and have become quite complicated. Not a bad idea to have a look at those as well.”

The mandates, he stressed, “belong to Member States. They've decided on them. Only they can evaluate them,” adding that the Secretary-General “has a margin of decision making, he can do a certain number of things on his own authority, but for the most part, Member States will decide where this thing goes, and that's how it should be in a democratic, Member States driven organization such as the United Nations.”

Ryder said, “the success of UN 80 will be judged by the impact that the United Nations is able to have for all end beneficiaries, the people who need the support to the UN. And that could be in the field of peace and security, it could be on the humanitarian front - and you've mentioned some of the very, very brutal cuts that we've had to face there - or it could be in the area of sustainable development, the three pillars of the UN. And here's the point; the point is UN80 is designed to improve the impact and effect of multilateralism and the UN.”

A revised programme budget for 2026, due in September, is expected to include significant reductions in funding and posts for Secretariat entities — a consequence of persistent cash flow constraints linked to delayed contributions from Member States.

The Chair said, “we have to look at our budget. You know that the Secretary-General has stated his intention to have a revised budget for 2026, which will involve substantial cuts in both budget and in posts. That’s the reality that we are in. But it’s not one thing or another. It's not just downsizing and job reductions or effectiveness. We have to reconcile the two objectives of making ourselves financially sustainable in the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in, but also be attentive, as always, to the impact that we have in delivering on our responsibilities under the charter.”
Firstly, he continued, “in the revised budget that we will be put to Member States in September. So, the 26 budget will incorporate them – the process will go into 27 as well - and when Member States get the evidence of our mandate review, implementation review, they're going to have to decide what they want to do with it. Do they wish to set up an intergovernmental process - the Secretary general has mentioned this as a possibility already. We'll have to see.”

The Pact for the Future, adopted in the General Assembly last September, Ryder said, “gives us a great blueprint of the things that we need to be focusing on, the types of substance that can make us a forward-looking system.”

He recalled that the UN “had a look at this massive number of mandates back in 2006,” but “didn't quite give the results that we wanted,” but said, this time, “we've got the data analytical capacities. We're applying, artificial intelligence techniques. I think, to provide much more and better organized information to Member States, a more compelling case that could drive, I think, a productive process there.”

Success, Ryder said, “will be precisely a UN system which is able to deliver more effectively, which is able to gather strength and consolidate - use a word that you wish - trust in and support for multilateral action. A UN system which is sustainable, a UN system, which is able to convey to public opinion and to political decision makers that yes, this is an organization, this is a system, these are methods that are worth investing in.”

Secretary-General António Guterres launched UN80 as a system-wide multi-phased push to transform the United Nations and strengthen how it delivers for people around the world. It seeks to restore confidence in the UN’s capacity to respond to today’s while also responding to external pressures such as shrinking budgets and growing scepticism about the effectiveness of multilateral institutions.

To tackle reform across such a vast institution, the Secretary-General established seven thematic clusters led by senior UN leaders from across the system. These cover peace and security, humanitarian action, development (Secretariat and UN system), human rights, training and research, and specialized agencies.

Each cluster is expected to produce proposals to improve coordination, reduce fragmentation, and realign functions where needed. Several clusters have already submitted initial ideas. A broader set of proposals will follow in July.

Initial reform proposals are expected to be reflected in the revised 2026 UN budget to be presented to the Member States in September. A report on the mandate implementation review and a public mandate registry will follow in the next few months, and system-wide proposals for structural changes are expected later.

INTERVIEW: Visitors to Expo 2025 appreciate ‘positive vision’ of UN

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Category: English Media

Published: Sunday, 22 June 2025 22:35

Written by Eager

UN Pavilion School children enjoy an immersive video at the UN Pavilion at Expo 2025.

By Daniel Dickinson, Osaka, Japan

Visitors to Expo 2025, a world fair currently being held in Osaka, Japan, appreciate the “positive vison” of a shared global future promoted by the United Nations; that’s according to Naomi Ichikawa, Director of the UN Pavilion.

Visitors can explore the UN’s 80-year history of advancing peace, human rights, sustainable development and climate action and see how the work of the UN system impacts the lives of all people across the world.

UN ExpoNaomi Ichikawa (left) welcomes the 10,000th visitor to the UN Pavilion in April, just five days after Expo 2025 opened.

What are the different sections of the pavilion and what they're trying to achieve?

We have four exhibit zones. The first zone portrays 80 years of UN history, highlighting key milestones from 1945 until today. It also shows the changing relationship between Japan and the UN.

In the 1940s following the devastation of the Second World War Japan was a recipient of UN assistance. But after Japan joined the UN (in 1956) it gradually started to take leadership in different areas, for example in climate change issues, disaster risk reduction and in the provision of Universal Health Coverage.

Zone two shows the work of diverse UN entities. Visitors will notice that there are many everyday objects on the wall; a toilet, helmet, car seat, post box but they may not realize that these items are actually closely related to the work of the UN.

UN Pavilion Visitors to the UN Pavilion explore the 'orb' room.

By tapping on the monitor, the items light up and an explanation is given about its relationship to the work of the UN.

One of the aims of this zone is to demonstrate that the UN is not just about conflict resolution. In Japan, when the UN is mentioned, many people think about the Security Council and ask why Japan isn’t a permanent member. 

We wanted to show in an interesting interactive way that the UN's work is so much more than that.

In zone three, which represents the future, we show through an immersive movie, a vision of the sustainable future that we can achieve if we work together. In the movie, the UN Secretary-General says that this future is not automatic, but it is one that we can achieve together.

The final part of the pavilion is the special exhibition zone that features the work of different UN entities each week. 

Why is it important that the UN is here at Expo? 

I would say that 90 per cent of Japanese people know about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but many do not know what they can do in their lives to contribute to the SDGs, or understand the positive role played by the UN in making the SDGs a reality in a global context. So, we felt that it was important to explain that work.

There are some 160 different countries participating in Expo and they are here to showcase their own cultures.

But it's the UN which can encourage countries to work together to achieve peace and a sustainable world. So, collaboration and multilateralism are key themes of the pavilion.

Why is that message important? 

The world is divided right now and you can sense the anxiety about that, even in Japan. That anxiety is not just focused on political issues but also on the environmental and other global challenges which go beyond the country level. At the UN Pavilion they can learn about these challenges but also the solutions.

I am so proud to be part of a team which explains how the UN is contributing to solving these global problems. It is rewarding to interact with visitors and to support their understanding of the UN.

Many are surprised by the range of work in which the organization is engaged, and everyone leaves inspired by our messages.

What is the most surprising reaction you've had from a visitor?

There has been great interest and engagement in the immersive video which envisions a hopeful future that all humanity can enjoy if we work together. It has a very simple message about collaboration which can be easily understood by people of all ages and backgrounds.

Many people have been deeply affected by its message and I have seen some moved to tears.

UN News/Daniel Dickinson A boy participates in an event at the UN pavilion to promote the SDGs.

I believe visitors feel closer to the UN after experiencing the video and the rest of the pavilion. I am from Japan and I think many people are surprised to meet a Japanese national working for the UN. That also helps to bring them closer to the work of the UN.

How important and relevant is an Expo in today’s world?

There really isn't any other place like this, where you can meet people from Uzbekistan, and then next door people from Malta. I think this is such a rare opportunity, especially in this era of the Internet, to be able to discover the culture and values of so many different nations.

Initially, the Japanese people were somewhat sceptical and critical of the cost of putting on Expo, because they said they could find all the information on the Internet.

However, when they visit, they realize that they can actually see, feel and learn about different cultures in person. It's very different from reading something on the Internet or watching YouTube.

This venue is so special and people come here with an open and enquiring mind.

I think the timing of this Expo is important as there is so much uncertainty and conflict in the world. At the UN, we are here to promote a better world for all people built on equality, dignity and peace, living in harmony with nature and sustaining our Planet. We hope to share this positive vision with as many visitors as possible until the closing of the Expo in mid-October.