With the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) reaching the end of their lifespan, attention now turns to September's launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the UN General Assembly. Although the MDGs were partly successful, the consensus is that the world appears to have changed so much in the past 15 years that many of the assumptions and approaches are no longer relevant.

It is the International Year of Light, the latest annual UN push to highlight primary outstanding global problems. “Until The Sun Comes Up” is singer-songwriter Ragav’s offering to SolarAid, an NGO that brings solar light to remote villages that lack electricity and which use hazardous kerosene lamps for lighting instead. 

UNHCR is calling for urgent action before the end of the monsoon season unleashes a new wave of people leaving on boats from the Bay of Bengal. [...] With the next "sailing season" expected to start in the coming weeks, UNHCR is working with agencies and other partners on an information campaign warning potential travelers of the risks of getting on smugglers' boats.

The Portfolio Committee on International Relations and Cooperation has raised concerns about the number of women employed in diplomatic work and who then go on to represent the country abroad. The Chairperson of the Committee, Mr Siphosezwe Masango, said more women need to be recruited into the diplomatic service.

The basics of the campaign are to empower the conference attendees to take action, especially in developing countries, and mobilize global citizens to secure safe air all parts of the world. The end goal of the campaign is to establish clean air as a basic human right and to implement it within the international pantheon of essential public health services akin to clean water, vaccinations, family planning and primary care.

More than 100 high school students from China and the United States on Saturday gathered in the UN Headquarters in New York City to get a closer look at the organization through participating in an event known as Model United Nations.

“The traditional approach of foreign offices and chancelleries, of strategic command centres, now needs to be supplemented and expanded and re-fashioned by public diplomacy and cultural outreach. I draw your attention to a very successful cultural diplomacy policy that the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has been vigorously promoting in the last year or so,” he said.