The explosion on the 4th of August was heard in Cyprus and felt in Jordan, where it registered an earthquake of 4.4 magnitude. It was considered the third strongest explosion after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a result of several factors, which could be seen as a precursor and a cause.

First was the stifling economic crisis that began in the summer of 2016, but worsened in the summer of 2019.  Lebanon began to suffer from a deficit in the budget, the treasury, and the balance of payments.

The 75^th session of the UN General Assembly (GA) will open on 15 September and its first weeks will see a number of high-level meetings: the first annual “SDG Moment” launching the Decade of Action, the High-level meeting to commemorate the 75^th Anniversary of the UN, the Biodiversity Summit, the High-level meeting on the 25^th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing +25) and the High-level meeting to commemorate and promote the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

Social Watch Philippines, Action for Economic Reforms and other civil society organizations deepen our understanding of the implications of #COVID19 on the economy, social policies, gender, rural and urban perspectives.

In recent years, the opportunities and challenges presented by rapid digitalization have become a staple on various agendas across the United Nations. Within the past few months, as the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 increase global reliance on digital technology, the relevance of and concerns about digitalization have heightened. Digital technologies have been prominent in a number of UN processes and deliberations such as UN75, human rights reports, the Roadmap for Digital Cooperation and the 2020 High-level Political Forum.

A snapshot of the ongoing work at the United Nations in times of crisis

This briefing paper looks at the financing for development (FfD) work at the United Nations in 2020, an exceptional year due to outbreak of the global coronavirus crisis in the spring. Following this shock, FfD became a highly relevant issue on the UN agenda. The FfD process as originally scheduled was redesigned, with the FfD Forum originally scheduled for April cut down from four days of face-to-face meetings to a virtual session that lasted for just one hour. An official outcome document was adopted anyway, however free of concrete commitments that would match the needs of coping with the crisis.