Marking World Chess Day on Tuesday, the UN is celebrating the fact that while COVID-19 has forced most sports to scale down, this ancient game of intellect, not brute strength, has demonstrated remarkable resilience and adaptability throughout months of lockdown worldwide.

The role of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in promoting development has become “even more critical” as a way of guiding and informing the COVID-19 pandemic response worldwide, Collen Vixen Kelapile said on Friday, speaking for the first time as the UN body’s president. 

Farmers, especially women and indigenous people, work tirelessly to put food on our tables. UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed met on Saturday women producers at a farmers’ market in Circo Massimo, Rome, ahead of the Food Systems Pre-Summit taking place next week.

Inefficient global food production is at the root of a huge rise in hunger as well as one-third of all emissions and 80 per cent of biodiversity loss, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned, in a call to all countries to transform food systems to speed up sustainable development. 

Negotiations began on Monday to approve a UN science report which will anchor high level summits later this year, charged with boosting climate action worldwide.

Forty-five per cent of the 8.2 billion people on the planet live in cities, which is only going to increase as the world becomes increasingly urban. 

Despite measurable gains in protecting women and girls from violence, recent progress is at risk of reversal unless global action accelerates, a new UN-backed report has revealed.

UN News just tested a new way to cover big international meetings – by reporting straight from the conference floor.

The Second World Summit for Social Development wrapped up on Thursday with nations warning that global progress on poverty and inequality will stall unless countries move faster from promises to implementation.

Tropical forests, vital allies in the fight against climate breakdown, are vanishing at an alarming rate. On Thursday, in a bid to help reverse this trend, Brazil launched a new initiative at a summit of world leaders in Belém, the gateway to the Amazon.