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From #StillHereStillBuilding to the SDG Ambassadors of Change, UN Lebanon marked International Youth Day by championing youth-led action.

“Give a young person a real problem, a limited budget, three months and the freedom to experiment,” says Julia Assi, a university student from South Lebanon and one of 23 newly selected Ambassadors of Change in the UN Global Compact Network Lebanon’s SDG Brain Lab. “Lebanon does not need thousands of perfect successes. It needs thousands of young people to have the opportunity to test thousands of ideas.”

The UN Secretary-General appealed on Wednesday for world leaders to invest in peace as violence, division and conflict exacerbate suffering worldwide.

António Guterres was speaking during the annual ceremony at the Japanese Peace Bell on the grounds of UN Headquarters in New York. 

The Secretary-General has condemned mounting civilian casualties in southern Lebanon and called on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanese territory, as fighting intensifies in and around Nabatieh.

Key points

Use of data-intensive technologies – in particular artificial intelligence (AI) data centres – is growing faster than electricity infrastructure can handle, the UN’s economic commission for Europe has warned, raising concerns about the future reliability and resilience of energy systems worldwide. 

Yasmin Al-Mashaan lost five brothers during more than a decade of conflict in Syria. Two were forcibly disappeared. Three were killed during peaceful demonstrations or by snipers loyal to the Bashar Al-Assad regime.

She found a picture of her brother, Uqba, among the “Caesar photos”, a cache of images smuggled out of Syria in 2013 documenting the deaths of thousands in government custody. That discovery, she said, is what pushed her to act.

Damaged roads, disrupted services and ongoing military activity continue to put civilians at risk in south Lebanon as strikes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah continue, according to the UN’s peacekeeping mission in the country (UNIFIL).

“Syria is not starting from zero; it is starting from resilience. But resilience alone is not a development strategy. A functioning agrifood economy is.” – Pirro-Tomaso Perri, Acting FAO Representative in the Syrian Arab Republic.

Six years after the devastating Beirut Port explosion, time has not erased the pain of those whose lives were irrevocably changed in a matter of seconds, nor has it diminished the urgency of securing justice. Mr. Jean Arnault, Officer-in-Charge of the Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL), expresses his unwavering solidarity with all those affected and pays tribute to their relentless pursuit of truth, justice, and accountability.

A job advert can hide a criminal network, and a single click can lead to a nightmare. Hundreds of thousands of people are trafficked every year on the promise of legitimate work abroad, only to be held captive and forced into online scam operations.

The choice of the tenth UN Secretary-General, who will take office in January 2027, could shape global diplomacy, the response to crises across the world and the direction of the multilateral system for the next decade.

Why it matters

The major questions going into the process which is now underway are: