May 2026, Geneva, Switzerland — When Captain Muru joined Cohort 1 of the Pathway to Prosperity Programme, he was not looking for a career pivot. He had already built one through decades in the private sector, a PhD in Digital Economy, and a steady shift towards community leadership through the Rotary Club of Nilay Central and District 3300 Malaysia.

June 2026, Geneva, Switzerland — As Vice President and Legal Advisor of FOMCA, Indrani P. Thuraisingham days are usually built around consumer grievances, policy analysis, community outreach, and ensuring that ordinary Malaysians are not left behind as the country accelerates into its digital future. It was exactly this background that brought her into a room full of like-minded, enthusiastic learners and mid-career professionals comprising Cohort 1 of the Pathway to Prosperity Programme.

1 June 2026, Hiroshima, Japan – Tatsuki Sakai from Japan is a policy officer at the World Food Programme (WFP) Togo, where he manages an agriculture and school feeding programme.
Tatsuki’s passion for food security was sparked in childhood by a movie that he saw, which showed children dying of starvation. It made him question the stark inequality between those with plenty to eat and those without. That spark eventually led him to work for the Embassy of Japan in the Republic of Cameroon, where he supported food aid programmes for developing countries, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Tanzania, where he worked on agricultural development.

29 May 2026, Hiroshima, Japan – Miki Sakiyama has built her career working for gender equality and women’s empowerment. In her current role at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), she supports programmes that advance women’s rights, youth participation, and inclusive development.

22 May 2026, Hiroshima, Japan – Lydia Tabu Casmiro Jamba from South Sudan works to help build peace in her country. Now managing programming for a national, women-led NGO that she helped to found and studying for her master’s degree, Lydia joined the FY2024 Primary Course of the Program for Global Human Resource Development for Peacebuilding and Development to strengthen her chosen career path.

Since October 2023, the Gaza Strip has been living through one of the most severe and prolonged displacement crises of recent decades. Families who fled bombardment lost not only their homes but any prospect of returning to them. More than a million people came to settle in makeshift sites along the coastline, in public spaces, on school grounds, and on the edges of urban areas, sheltering in manufactured tents that offered little protection from the elements. With almost no intact housing available, families in tents on low-lying, near-sea-level ground faced acute exposure when winter arrived.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) play a critical role in advancing sustainable development by shaping the knowledge, skills, and mindsets of present and future generations. Developed by UNITAR, UNESCO, and a collective of HEIs, the Leaders in Higher Education Alliance and Programme - for Accelerating Sustainability Transformations (LEAP-FAST) aimed to strengthen this role by fostering a global movement of sustainability leaders in higher education. The initiative comprises four components: a Leadership Dialogue, a Certificate Programme, an SDG Ambassadors' Programme, and Regional and National Spin-offs.

April 2026 - Small Island Developing States (SIDS) such as Saint Lucia face a persistent challenge: producing timely, accurate, and granular data to inform decision-making. Rapidly changing informal settlements, combined with limited statistical resources, make it difficult to maintain up-to-date population estimates and vulnerability assessments.
For Saint Lucia’s Central Statistics Office (CSO), the challenge became particularly visible when the 2022 population and household census was estimated to have a 23.3 per cent undercount rate. Based on listings and field experience, the CSO suspected that much of this undercount was concentrated in informal settlement areas, where housing patterns can change quickly between census cycles. These gaps are not only technical. They affect how services are planned, how risks are assessed, and how resources are allocated.

Over the past years, the Tanzania Peacekeeping Training Centre (TPTC) has undergone a significant transformation: from a relatively low-profile national training institution to an increasingly recognized centre of reference for peacekeeping training in Africa. UNITAR’s support in 2025 contributed to accelerating this trajectory by reinforcing the centre’s institutional capacity, training methodologies, and ability to adapt to evolving operational demands.

Electronics are the world’s fastest-growing waste stream, and yet most countries still lack the data, systems, and institutional capacities required for effective management. UNITAR’s Sustainable Cycles (SCYCLE) Programme has not only built the world’s most comprehensive multi-level monitoring architecture—spanning global, regional, and national e-waste and material-flow analyses—but also develops the expert networks, methodological leadership, and practical system knowledge needed to support real-world transition processes.