21 July 2026, Geneva, Switzerland - UNITAR invites Ukrainian women refugees in Poland and internally displaced women in Ukraine to apply for a free digital upskilling and reskilling programme designed to strengthen career opportunities in technology, remote work and entrepreneurship.

21 July 2026, Hiroshima, Japan – UNITAR invites 500 motivated learners of all genders, aged 18 and above, living in or from Pacific Island countries and territories or the Asia-Pacific to apply for the Japan-funded “UNITAR Women’s Leadership in Disaster Risk Reduction Training Programme for World Tsunami Awareness Day 2026– Building Economies and Livelihood Resilient to the Global Shocks”. The programme will equip the participants with lifelong skills in disaster risk reduction and inclusive leadership. The deadline for applications is 21 August 2026 (11:59 p.m. JST [UTC+9]).

Zarif Ludin, originally from Afghanistan, is Head of Institutional Partnerships at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). He completed the UNITAR Executive Master’s Degree Programme in 2016. Since then, he has been applying his skills in advancing public financial management systems globally through the accountancy profession. Recently, he helped bring about the new partnership between ACCA and UNITAR, through which the two entities plan to jointly design, deliver and scale practical learning pathways in finance, sustainability, digital innovation, entrepreneurship, public financial management, ethics and value creation.

9 July 2026, Hiroshima, Japan – On 7 July 2026, UNITAR welcomed 1,114 participants from across all 11 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states to the UNITAR Green Economic Acceleration: A Japan–ASEAN Strategic Programme for Sustainable Green Finance. The programme aims to strengthen Japan–ASEAN cooperation in sustainable finance and build regional capacity to design, finance and advance bankable green economy projects. It will run until February 2027 in three progressively selective phases, with the generous funding from the Government and People of Japan.

8 July 2026, Hiroshima, Japan - On 3 July 2026, 50 youth leaders from 39 countries committed to act for a future without nuclear weapons at a youth conference “From Memory to Action” that they organized. The conference was held in Hiroshima, Japan, and online, and was the culminating event of the Japan study visit of the Youth Leader Fund for a World without Nuclear Weapons (YLF) programme, which took the participants to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

7 July 2026, Hiroshima, Japan - On 1 July 2026, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) officially launched RISE (Resilient Ideas for Sustainable Entrepreneurship) LAB 2026: Advancing Youth Skills in Business and Innovation for Food Security in South Sudan through an onboarding webinar, welcoming 238 young participants from across South Sudan.

30 June 2026, Hiroshima, Japan – The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) invites young people from participating countries across the Asia-Pacific region to apply to the free Youth Leaders for World Tsunami Awareness Day 2026 Online Course (1–30 September 2026). Through the course, participants will develop a stronger understanding of disaster risk reduction, preparedness and resilience. The application deadline is 14 August 2026 (11:59 p.m. JST [UTC+9]).

May 2026, Geneva, Switzerland — When Tan Yu Xian first joined Cohort 1 of the Pathway to Prosperity Programme, he found himself in a room of working professionals: engineers, managers and specialists, some with twenty or thirty years of industry experience behind them. The programme has been designed for exactly this audience: early and mid-career professionals upskilling in AI and data centre infrastructure, two of the fastest-moving fields in the global economy.

May 2026, Geneva, Switzerland — When Danny McQueen joined Cohort 1 of the Pathway to Prosperity Programme, he was carrying twenty years of project management experience and a misconception most people share. "I always thought AI was actually ChatGPT. That's it. I thought you just ask questions and it answers back." Data centres, he assumed, were equally modest: "I thought it was just a small centre which keeps your data. I didn't know it was a huge kind of construction — with cooling systems and diverse equipment."

22 June 2026, Seoul, Republic of Korea - As artificial intelligence and frontier technologies continue to reshape education, work and global development, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and Seoul National University (SNU) have opened discussions on potential collaboration to strengthen future-oriented skills among students and young professionals.