27 February 2023, Geneva, Switzerland - The Spanish edition of the FAO and UNITAR joint e-Learning Course on “Trade, Food Security, and Nutrition” for Latin American policymakers launched in September 2022 has been completed.

10 February 2023, Geneva, Switzerland- The latest annual edition of the Geneva Interfaith Dialogue, hosted by UNITAR in collaboration with the Permanent Mission of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the United Nations in Geneva, took place in early February. The event convened a diverse panel of Ambassadors, high-level representatives of the world's major faiths, and the International Geneva community to engage on the links between faith, politics, and society.

10 January 2023, Geneva, Switzerland - The XIX Annual Steering Committee Meeting of the CIFAL Global Network was successfully hosted by CIFAL Honolulu and Chaminade University. In 2022 the CIFAL Global Network reached over ninety-thousand beneficiaries through over 500 events.

Over the past months, UNITAR has been supporting UN Statistics Division (UNSD) in developing an e-version of the Handbook on Management and Organization of National Statistical Systems. It is launched now and available on UNSD's website.

UN SDG:Learn is featuring a new tool “Changemaker Scan” developed by Ubiquity University. It is a self-appraisal for you to build your changemaker profile in 8 SDG cross-cutting competencies defined by UNESCO! Go to your dashboard to try it now or register on the platform here: www.unsdglearn.org/register

In an effort to promote global progress toward a more sustainable, peaceful, and prosperous world, UNITAR has been working since its founding in 1963 to bridge the capacity gaps that exist for individuals and institutions. By developing tailored learning solutions that facilitate the creation of flexible and intellectually stimulating environments for learning and collaboration and encourage participation, dialogue, local ownership, and knowledge base expansion for sustainable impact, UNITAR’s Division for Peace helps to accelerate the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 16 of Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions as well as the Agenda 2030.

You want to create a new exciting online course that will be taken by hundreds - or even thousands - of participants from all over the world. You want your project to have the greatest possible impact and reach, and to do so, the course needs to be available in different languages. But how do you go about it?

For the Division for People and Social Inclusion, multilingualism is key for the expansive outreach of our activities and events. Mr. Alex Mejia, Director of UNITAR’s People’s Division and Social Inclusion explains, “it is fundamental to embrace multilingualism for two main reasons. One because we are the United Nations, we are supposed to be multilingual, and two, we cannot teach other people to embrace multilingualism if we do not embrace it ourselves.”

Quito, Ecuador, 20 September 2022 - UNITAR in close collaboration with CIFAL Ecuador have continued to rollout the Autosobriety Training Programme to Prevent Drink Driving to expand its reach across different Provinces in Ecuador. Over 800 individuals working in different areas in the field of road safety were trained throughout 5 workshops that took place in the Provinces of Santo Domingo, Cotopaxi, Cuenca, Loja, and Portoviejo between June and July 2022.

Citizen science data (CSD) presents untapped opportunities to track progress towards the SDGs offering multiple advantages for Governments and National Statistical Offices (NSOs): help fill in data gaps for indicators where traditional data collection instruments, such as, household surveys or administrative registers may not be well suited or may not have the sufficient coverage, improve the granularity of data and sometimes timeliness, and offer an effective and cost-efficient means for NSOs to address data needs of policy-makers in the context of limited or falling resources. Many citizen science data initiatives and datasets exist already. Why then have NSOs not been using citizen science data to any large extent to date? To begin with, NSOs require a better understanding of how such data can be useful in their specific context and requirements, as well as understanding what exactly needs to be done to leverage it. Citizen science practitioners, for their part, need to better understand policy applications and know how to ensure that the generated data meets necessary quality standards. This Policy Brief aims to bring greater understanding to these issues by drawing on a research conducted as part of the EU-funded Crowd4SDG project with contributions from several international organizations and research centers. It shows how NSOs can give value to CSD benefitting official statistics, policy-making and citizen science communities and helping ensure that no one is left behind.