July 2022, Hiroshima Japan – In June 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh), also known as ISIS, attacked the town of Mosul in Iraq, destroying homes, displacing thousands, and claiming the city and everything in it for their own. The residents of Mosul, including Sayf Al Ashqar, lost everything they and their families had built over decades.

June 2022 – In Machakos, Kenya, Mwikali Munyao runs her carpentry business, taking orders online and creating wood furniture for local customers. Mwikali didn’t start off as a carpenter or a business owner, but the COVID-19 pandemic took her job as a customer service representative. It transformed her life.

June 2022, Hiroshima, Japan – “It’s not enough to search for connections with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We have to put the SDGs to use and update our principles and policies to reflect them,” says Cosmo Takagaki, Project Research Associate at Keio University and Research Associate of United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability. Cosmo has been a lecturer for the UNITAR Hiroshima Youth Ambassador Program since 2020, and is active as an advisor on the Sustainable Development Goals.

June 2022, Hiroshima, Japan – In a country that has gone through multiple wars and conflicts in past decades , it is not easy to create consensus around peacebuilding, get buy-in from citizens and advance it, even drop by drop. Chol Gatkek Tut, Acting Director General for Peace and Social Cohesion, Ministry of Peacebuilding of South Sudan, has been striving to bring people together since she was a teenager.

The Philippines has been committed to and takes pride in its agreement to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. The Philippines does not own nor possess and is not in control of nuclear weapon despite its maritime vulnerability as an archipelago.

April 2022 - The volcanic eruption and subsequent tsunami that hit Tonga in early 2022 is a stark reminder of the reality of disasters, and the fact that a disaster, can hit anywhere at any time and render communities vulnerable to massive damages. Mele Moimoi, a disaster risk reduction trainer at Tonga National Council of Churches (TNCC), and an alumna of UNITAR programme in 2021, tells her story.

Hosna is a 19-year-old Afghan alumna of UNITAR’s 2021 digital upskilling programme, and she is distressed about the gender gap in Afghanistan. Hosna was attending university in Kabul when the Afghan regime changed overnight, in August 2021. Fearing for her safety, she fled to Iraq, where she now continues her undergraduate studies. Hosna worries about her sister and friends back home.

Maureen Nduta was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya. Having lived in the city all her life, she wanted a fresh experience and moved to Mombasa in the coastal region. Her plans were all set: first get a small restaurant running, then start a small farm to supply produce for the restaurant, and later on enrol for a business degree. Everything seemed to be going to plan. Then COVID-19 happened.

March 2022 – Raghad Hav started with a small idea and brought it to life with the help of the 2019 UNITAR training programme Empowering Social Entrepreneurs and Youth Leaders. Raghad founded She Codes Too, where she teaches Iraqi women to code.

Mohamadou Bello is driven to apply his extensive experience in education and digital learning to make a broadly accessible, multilingual e-learning platform for the people of Cameroon. The UNITAR Sahel Region Digital Reskilling Programme is helping him bring this dream to reality.