25 May 2021, Geneva, Switzerland – The President of the 74th World Health Assembly and Minister of Health, Royal Government of Bhutan, Ms Dechen Wangmo visited the Defeat-NCD Partnership’s office at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in Geneva today to set the tone at a high-level panel discussion aimed at tackling the twin challenges of COVID-19 and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). “I understand that time has passed for mere statements and rhetoric in addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of universal access to health”, she said. “It is time to act now”.

25 May 2021, Hong Kong, China / Hiroshima, Japan - UNITAR and ITS Education Asia will jointly launch the UNITAR Youth Ambassador Asia Pacific Programme. The 10-week programme empowers high school students to help our world build back better, greener, and stronger from the COVID-19 pandemic. The programme will debut in Hong Kong in September 2021 with the support of 20 official school partners. It will be expanded to various cities in China in 2022, followed by other Asia-Pacific countries in 2023.

The UNITAR Iraq Entrepreneurship and Leadership Youth Training Programme is a fellowship initiative that provides youth with skills in entrepreneurship and leadership to develop or strengthen local businesses that contribute to social and economic stability in their country. In this Impact Story, we review the extent to which participants have applied or transferred knowledge and skills from the programme and the challenges encountered by them and spotlight the experiences from three participants.

19 May 2021, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic - The “Autosobriety Training Programme to Prevent Drink-Driving” kicks off today, resulting from a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding between INTRANT, UNITAR and Pernod Ricard, with the common ambition to reduce alcohol-related road crashes in the Dominican Republic.

20 May 2021, Geneva, Switzerland - UNITAR is proud to announce that Professor Paul Arthur Berkman, Associated Fellow, has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program Award to Norway for 2021-22. This award is conferred by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

23-24 April, 2021, Shanghai, China - The Digital Intelligence Technology Seminar for Senior Managers of Asset Management Institutions was successfully held at the Shanghai CLIIF Lujiazui Institute of International Finance. The seminar was co- hosted by the Investment Technology League (ITL) and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), CIFAL Shanghai, and co- organized by the Shanghai Asset Management Association (SAMA). The seminar was supported by the Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau.

New technologies, products and related services have the potential to stimulate financial innovation and efficiency as well as improve financial inclusion, but they also present new risks for the financial system and regulators.

UNITAR will be offering a new training programme titled Gender Mainstreaming in Renewable Energy Trade. This offering is aimed at training policymakers with a better understanding of the gendered dimensions affecting the growth of the renewable energy sector and renewable energy trade.

The new training programme is part of UNITAR’s comprehensive Digital Finance Initiative, which aims at supporting training for emerging innovations in trade and finance.

The conference generated forward-looking and future-oriented discussions on the future of finance in the context of the latest FinTech innovations, best practices of digitalizing monetary policy and currencies from the regulatory perspective, and the potential of digital innovations in accelerating sustainable development. UNITAR partnered with such distinguished entities for this event as the Asian Development Bank, Deloitte Switzerland, Geneva Finance Research Institute of the University of Geneva, Instimatch Global, National Bank of Hungary, SIX Digital Exchange and Swiss Finance and Technology Association.