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Source: United Nations (video statements)

Secretary-General’s video message on the occasion of the beginning of Ramadan.
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For Muslims around the world, the holy month of Ramadan is a sacred period of reflection and prayer.

Ramadan also represents a noble vision of hope and peace.

But for too many members of the human family, this vision remains distant.

From Afghanistan to Yemen, from Gaza to Sudan and beyond, people are suffering the horrors of conflict, hunger, displacement, discrimination and more.

In these difficult and divided times, let us heed Ramadan’s enduring message.

To bridge divides.

To deliver help and hope to those who are suffering.

And to safeguard the rights and dignity of every person.

Every year, I pay a special solidarity visit to a Muslim community and join in the fast.

And every year I come away heartened by Ramadan’s spirit of peace and compassion.

May this Holy Month inspire us to work as one to build a more peaceful, generous and just world for all people.

Ramadan Kareem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yphsn4zgLio

Source: United Nations (video statements)

Bintou Keita knows instinctively that some moments call for a more human response than words alone can offer. Once, at a ceremony to mark the end of the devastating Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, she found herself hesitating to deliver her pre-prepared statement to a grief-stricken crowd.

“I have my statement, but I can’t deliver [it] because there’s something else I have to do before. And in that moment, what came to me was humming, so I did it. And at that moment, the tears – my own, the tears in the audience – came out. These people were grieving, were still mourning.”

Bintou Keita has retired after 36 years with the UN, most recently the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and head of the peacekeeping mission there. In this episode, she reflects on times when peacekeepers saved thousands of lives, on hopes for a people reeling from decades of violence, and shares why she learned to never say never again.

Listen to more Awake at Night episodes: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwoDFQJEq_0b6hu1e8oxsch9W0D7vkNqt
#podcast #UnitedNations #AwakeAtNight #Peacekeeping

About Awake at Night
Hosted by Melissa Fleming, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, the podcast ‘Awake at Night’ is an in-depth interview series focusing on remarkable United Nations staff members who dedicate their career to helping people in parts of the world where they have the hardest lives – from war zones and displacement camps to areas hit by disasters and the devastation of climate change

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3UW8ldT2TWA