FORUM: ‘‘FIDE's 99th anniversary.” International Chess Day 2023. Throughout its history, FIDE has been instrumental in shaping the world of chess, and we never stop aiming for new heights, serving the game and chess community. Today we celebrate the power of chess to promote fairness, inclusion and mutual respect.Chess has found its place in the ever-changing world of modern technology.You could teach a kid how to play, as it would be easier and more rewarding for you both! But it can also be a grown-up since learning chess has beneficial effects at any age. To align with the Year of the Woman in Chess, we particularly encourage you to teach a girl how to play chess. Please share this call to action with your regional federations and chess clubs, and encourage them to share their experience on social media using the hashtags: #WorldChessDay,#Chess,#20july, so their actions can inspire others.
We invite you to join us for this exceptional learning experience. Ideal for teachers, chess educators, and beginner and advanced players who have a basic knowledge of chess and experience working with children, the course will be run online in English from August 18-20, 2023. The participants will have an opportunity to take an exam to qualify for the esteemed FIDE title of School Instructor. Moreover, FIDE Chess in Education Commission offer participants who successfully complete the course a special benefit - exclusive lifetime access to the Opening Master Premium Chess Database, which currently contains more than 9.6 million official over-the-board chess games and is being updated on a monthly basis. For a comprehensive overview of the course, To secure your spot, kindly complete and submit the registration form provided here.
Please note that the deadline for applications is August 14. Given the limited number of places available (20 in total), we encourage you to register at your earliest convenience, as applications will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis.
Nelson Mandela was a colossus of courage and conviction.
A leader of immense achievement and extraordinary humanity.
A giant of our times, whose legacy we best honour through action:
Action to expel the poison of racism, discrimination and hate;
Action to extinguish the legacies of colonialism;
And action to promote equality, human rights and above all, justice.
Today, poverty, hunger and inequality are on the rise.
Countries are drowning in debt.
The climate crisis is destroying the lives of those who have done the least to cause it.
And our unfair and outdated international financial system is not fulfilling its function as a global safety net.
We have it in our power to solve each of these problems.
So, as we commemorate Nelson Mandela’s life and legacy, let us be animated by his spirit of humanity, dignity and justice.
Let us stand with women and girls, young people and change makers everywhere.
And let us take action to build a better world.
Thank you.
António Guterres
EVENTS: On July 20th; The United Nations General Assembly will mark the Nelson Mandela International Day 2023 with an informal plenary meeting at UN Headquarters — NYC, Conference room 4, from 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. EDT;
Speakers:
H.E. Mr. Csaba Kőrösi, President of the General Assembly; H.E. Mr. António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General; Andrew Young, Politician, activist, and Former Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations.
17 July is the Day of International Criminal Justice. It marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute on 17 July 1998, the founding treaty of the ICC, which seeks to protect people from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. 17 July unites all those who wish to support justice, promote victims' rights, and help prevent crimes that threaten the peace, security and well-being of the world.
1. Opening of the exhibit “Life After Conflict” in The Hague, Netherlands.
Date: Wednesday, 12 July 2023 at 17:00, followed by a reception.
Venue: The Hague City Hall, Atrium C, The Hague, Netherlands
An International Criminal Court (ICC) exhibition entitled “Life After Conflict” will be on display in The
Hague in July/August 2023. The 2023 display will be part of the commemorations for the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the Rome Statute on 17 July 2023.
Through stories told by survivors of atrocity crimes, the exhibit shows the impact of the Rome Statute
system and the Court’s work. The photographs, by award-winning photographers Rena Effendi, Pete Muller
and Finbarr O’Reilly, cover stories from five countries in which the ICC has conducted investigations, all
at different stages of the ICC process.
Duration: one day (two segments of three hours each from 10:00 to 13:00 and 15:00 to 18:00) Interpretation into English, French and Spanish (to be confirmed).
The commemorative day at the United Nations will be divided in two sessions of three hours each. The
programme will be conveyed in the coming weeks.
The morning session will encompass an opening ceremony and will be followed by a brief high-level, inperson Ministerial Roundtable on the strategic vision for the next decade of the Court open only to the
Ministerial Level Representatives and a representative of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court
(CICC). The morning session will end with a treaty ceremony for depositories of instruments of
ratification/accession, amendments to the Rome Statute, as well as the signing of voluntary cooperation
agreements or the Agreement on Privileges and Immunities with the Court.
The afternoon session will be devoted to a continuation of the discussion on the strategic vision for the next
decade: how to ensure consistent and sustainable support for the ICC through three distinct panels
organized around some key themes for the Court and the Rome Statute system. These will include:
a. Connecting the dots: Strengthening the international criminal law ecosystem: The role of the ICC
as part of a global ecosystem of justice, intended to allow for a discussion of the complementarity
regime and current cooperative trends with national systems and other accountability efforts;
b. Ensuring adequate remedy to victims of Rome Statute crimes, dedicated to a reflection on victims
participation and reparation within the Rome Statute system; and
c. Strengthening the Rome Statute system: The Review Mechanism and beyond: The strengthening
of the Rome Statute system through the current Review process will be coming to a closure in 2023.
This panel is intended to take stock of what has been accomplished and to identify the way forward
after its conclusion.
The commemorative event will be followed by a reception at the United Nations Headquarters hosted by
the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations.
3. Commemoration event to take place at the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal
Justice and Human Rights.
Date: Thursday, 12 and Friday, 13 October 2023.
Duration: 1.5 days
Hybrid event, with online interaction from invitees, to be streamed on social platforms aimed at continuing
and broadening the discussion initiated in New York on the strategic vision for the next decade: how to
ensure consistent and sustainable support for the ICC. A declaration or recommendations resulting from discussions in New York and Siracusa, if any, may be
adopted by State Parties at the twenty-second session of the Assembly of States Parties to be held in New
York from 4 to 14 December 2023.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted on 17 July 1998, 25 years ago. It is the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which seeks to protect people from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.
The first panel will include a youth focus group and a
discussion on how teaching and learning processes can be optimized to prepare young people
for a changing labour market.
The second panel will reflect on UNESCO’s Global Skills Academy
and its work to scale up youth skills development as well as what more can be done to build
employability, entrepreneurship, and resilience among young people.
By raising awareness, fostering collaboration, and empowering young people, this observance
contributes to building a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future.
The UNESCO-UNEVOC,
WorldSkills International, and partners such as WorldSkills Germany, the German Federal
Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH remain committed to supporting youth in realizing
their full potential and becoming active agents of change in their communities.
Format The event will take place in English in a hybrid format, with participants joining in person in Bonn and online via Zoom webinar. Register here:
HOW TO GET INVOLVED!
1. Raise awareness: World Youth Skills Day seeks to raise global awareness about the
importance of equipping young individuals with skills that are essential for personal
development, employment, and entrepreneurship.
2. Foster dialogue and collaboration: The observance provides a platform to engage in
dialogue, exchange best practices, and foster collaboration. By bringing together diverse
stakeholders, the event aims to create synergies and partnerships to address the skills
gap.
3. Promote youth employment and entrepreneurship: World Youth Skills Day endeavours
to promote youth employment by emphasizing the critical role of skills in facilitating
access to decent work opportunities. Furthermore, it seeks to encourage youth
entrepreneurship as a means of unleashing innovation, economic growth, and
sustainable development.
4. Empower marginalized youth: The observance prioritizes empowering marginalized and
disadvantaged youth. It seeks to ensure that they have access to quality education and
vocational training, bridging the gap between formal and informal sectors, and creating
pathways for their active participation in the economy.
INITIATIVES: Three years ago, UNESCO launched the Global Skills Academy (GSA) to provide one-stop access to training that can help young people develop skills for employment. Under the GSA initiative, UNESCO-UNEVOC leverages its partnerships with more than 220 UNEVOC Centres in over 140 countries to match learners with training offered by members of the Global Education Coalition. The selected trainings aim to help 10 million young people build skills for employability and resilience by 2029. WorldSkills is the global hub of skills excellence, working in 85 Member countries and regions to promote the benefits of vocational education and training for young people. Every two years, WorldSkills hosts the WorldSkills Competition and Conference, a global celebration of skills, showcasing how equitable access to skills changes the futures of individuals, communities, and countries.
With regard to policy mechanisms through which policies could become effective, the ILO is proposing a “productivity ecosystems for decent work” framework to address existing barriers to productivity growth. Enterprises and their workers are embedded in an “ecosystem” in which the drivers of productivity growth and decent work are interlinked across several levels. Policies need to target specific industry and occupational needs to help businesses and employees to acquire the necessary competences to enable a successful technological transformation. Businesses not only lack necessary skills among their employees; they also often lack the requisite managerial experience, which can be acquired, for instance, through more intensive interaction with competitors in similar or related sectors. Low managerial turnover thus hampers the adoption of more productive management practices. Moreover, faster productivity growth requires that micro and small enterprises be helped to transition to formality and to achieve and maintain a minimum efficient scale and economic viability. A recent story from Colombia illustrates very well how social dialogue and collective bargaining have greatly improved productivity. Social dialogue is crucial for buttressing efforts to improve productivity. This pillar is central to addressing the large productivity differences among individuals and firms as well as the widening gap between productivity growth and wage growth, which disproportionately hurt workers. There is also evidence that bolstering the quality of industrial relations at the shop floor level helps to prevent inefficient restructuring, thereby improving firm productivity. Works councils, which have to be consulted on restructuring, investment plans or layoffs, have been shown to reduce labour turnover. When combined with industry-level bargaining that prevents rent-seeking, works councils have been shown to raise firm-level productivity and speed up the introduction of new technologies. The overall effects of trade unions and collective bargaining on productivity are ambiguous and subject to debate. Nevertheless, a stronger voice of organized labour at the company level could help to achieve faster and more equitable introduction of new technologies, which in turn could improve the longer-term prospects for productivity and employment, for instance by strengthening incentives for worker training and supporting workforce reorganization. Special attention should also be given to the role played by policies aiming to reduce the incidence of informal employment.
Background: In 2014, the United Nations General Assembly declared 15 July as World Youth Skills Day, to celebrate the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship. Since then, World Youth Skills Day events have provided a unique opportunity for dialogue between young people, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions, the private sector, policy-makers and development partners. As the world undergoes rapid technological, economic and societal transformations, young people will need the right skills to successfully navigate these challenges and achieve their full potential.
At least 25% of global dust emissions originate from human activities, and in some areas, desert dust has doubled in the 20th century. The impact of this phenomena is difficult to control, as human activity in one part of the world can cause sand and dust storms in another region. However, just as sand and dust storms are caused by human activities, these storms can also be reduced through human actions.
Sand and dust storms are an essential element of the Earth’s natural bio-chemical cycles, but are also caused in part by human-induced drivers, including climate change, and unsustainable land management and water use. In turn, sand and dust storms contribute to climate change and air pollution. Sand and dust storms’ impacts are felt in all regions of the world, both in developed and developing countries, and pose severe challenges to achieving 11 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, especially:
SDG-2 — Goal 2: Zero hunger SDG-3 — Goal 3: Health SDG-6 — Goal 6: Water and sanitation SDG-8 — Goal 8: Economic growth SDG-11 — Goal 11: Cities SDG-13 — Goal 13: Climate action, and SDG-15 — Goal 15: Biodiversity forests and desertification.
EVENTS: On July 12th, at High level Panel Discussion was held at the UNHQ.
To mark the first observance of the International Day to Combat SDS, several events were organized around the world. The “Commemoration of the International Day of Combating Sand and Dust Storms” event, co-organized by the Permanent Missions of Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Senegal at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, featured various speakers from organizations collaborating in the UN SDS Coalition. At the same time, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) hosted a series of regional webinars bringing together stakeholders from different regions.
The United Nations General Assembly stressed the need for cooperation at the global and regional levels, with a view to preventing, managing and mitigating the effects of sand and dust storms through the enhancement of early warning systems and the sharing of climate and weather information to forecast sand and dust storms. The General Assembly affirmed thatresilient action to combat and reduce sand and dust storms requires a better understanding of the severe multidimensional impacts of sand and dust storms, including the deterioration of the health, well-being and livelihood of people, increased desertification and land degradation, deforestation, loss of biodiversity and land productivity, threatening food security, and their impact on sustainable economic growth.
PUBLICATIONS: The aim of the Sand and Dust Storms Compendium is to provide information and guidance on how to assess and address the risks posed by sand and dust storms and plan actions to combat sand and dust storms. The Compendium brings together this information from a wide range of sources
FORUM: "Unleashing the power of gender equality: Uplifting the voices of women and girls to unlock our world’s infinite possibilities." World Population Day 2023. Women and girls make up 49.7% of the global population, yet women and girls are often ignored in discussions on demographics, with their rights violated in population policies. This pervasive injustice keeps women and girls out of school, the workforce and leadership positions; limits their agency and ability to make decisions about their health and sexual and reproductive lives; and heightens their vulnerability to violence, harmful practices and preventable maternal death, with a woman dying every two minutes due to pregnancy or childbirth.We must advance gender equality to create a more just, resilient and sustainable world. The creativity, ingenuity, resources and power of women and girls are fundamental to addressing demographic and other challenges that threaten our future, including climate change and conflict. When women and girls are empowered by societies to exert autonomy over their lives and bodies, they and their families thrive. Follow the conversations with the hashtags: #womenandgirls, #WorldPopulationDay; #11July; #HarnessingOpportunities, #Infinitepossibilities.
EVENTS: On July 11th; to mark the World Population Day 2023, the UNFPA and the Specialized agencies willhighlight the need support women and girls around the world, and to advance gender equality to help realize the dreams of all 8 billion of us on our planet.This World Population Day is a reminder that we can achieve the prosperous, peaceful and sustainable future envisioned by the ICPD and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development if we harness the power of every human being on the planet. When we unlock the full potential of women and girls – encouraging and nurturing their desires for their lives, their families and their careers – we galvanize half the leadership, ideas, innovation, and creativity to better society.
Yet leaders are falling woefully behind in efforts to build a peaceful and prosperous world for all.
Halfway to the 2030 deadline the Sustainable Development Goals are dangerously off track. Gender equality is almost 300 years away. Progress on maternal health and access to family planning has been glacial.
This year’s World Population Day focuses on unleashing the power of gender equality.
Gender-based discrimination harms everyone – women, girls, men, and boys. Investing in women uplifts all people, communities, and countries.
Advancing gender equality, improving maternal health, and empowering women to make their own reproductive choices are both essential in themselves, and central to achieving all the Sustainable Development Goals.
Let us stand with women and girls fighting for their rights. And let us intensify our quest to make the Sustainable Development Goals a reality for all 8 billion of us.
Imagine a world where everyone – all 8 billion of us – has a future bursting with promise and potential. Now open your eyes to the current reality that 4 billion women and girls – half of humanity – face discrimination solely based on their gender.
Thirty years ago, at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), we set out to achieve a world in which people lived longer, healthier lives and enjoyed more rights and choices than ever before. This vision has become a reality for many; in fact, the human population is at its highest number ever, thanks in large part to improvements in health care and increased longevity. Yet, as we celebrate the progress that has been made, we must also recognize that for millions, even billions, of others this promise remains out of reach.
This World Population Day is a reminder that we can achieve the prosperous, peaceful and sustainable future envisioned by the ICPD and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development if we harness the power of every human being on the planet. When we unlock the full potential of women and girls – encouraging and nurturing their desires for their lives, their families and their careers – we galvanize half the leadership, ideas, innovation, and creativity to better society.
Realizing sexual and reproductive health and rights for all is the foundation for gender equality, dignity and opportunity. Nevertheless, over 40 per cent of women around the world cannot exercise their right to make decisions as fundamental as whether or not to have children. Empowering women and girls, including through education and access to modern contraception, helps to support them in their aspirations — and to chart the path of their own lives.
Advancing gender equality is a crosscutting solution to many population concerns. In ageing societies that worry about labour productivity, achieving gender parity in the workforce is the most effective way to improve output and income growth. Meanwhile, in countries experiencing rapid population growth, women’s empowerment through education and family planning can bring enormous benefits by way of human capital and inclusive economic growth.
Thirty years ago, the world united behind a shared vision of the future, one that recognized the rights of women and girls as central to global development. The solution is clear: Accelerating the advancement of gender equality – through access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, improved education, appropriate labour policies, and equitable norms in the workplace and home – will result in healthier families, stronger economies, and resilient societies.
That message of gender equality is as powerful today as it was then; our resolve must be as well. Let us unite once more to imagine a world in which every one of us has the equal opportunity to thrive, and let us join forces to ensure a reality in which every nation’s real wealth – no matter its size or stage of development – is its people, and that means all people, not half.
UNFPA stands with all 8 billion people so that they may claim their rights and make their own choices. Because only that will lead to a future that will bring equality and prosperity to us all.
UNFPA Executive Director.
Did you know Africa and Asia are driving global population growth?
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