Tag: un organizations

Photo: UNICC/Cadinu

UN Secretary-General Visits the UN Support Base in Valencia

Posted on | by William Allen

UNICC takes part in the tenth anniversary celebration

UNICC is proud to have been a part of the warm welcome to Secretary-General António Guterres to the UN Support Base in Valencia to take part in the celebration of its tenth birthday.

I’m extremely grateful for the work of my colleagues at the UN Support Base in Valencia, Spain. Through the deployment of innovative solutions and digital support, they play a critical role in ensuring we can deliver our work, around the clock and around the world.

António Guterres, UN Secretary-General

The Secretary-General recognised the work of the people at the base, which has expanded beyond the UN Department of Operational Support (DOS, formerly DFS) to include more Agencies, including UNOPS, UNICC, and now UNICEF and IOM.

The UN Support Base hosts the UN Global Service Centre (UNGSC) to meet the needs of UN peace operations worldwide. Nowadays, UNGSC’s mandate is to provide critical logistics, geospatial, Information & Telecommunications technologies services and training to all Secretariat Entities, Peacekeeping and Special Political missions, Agencies, Funds and Programmes of the UN system worldwide.

UNICC Director Sameer Chauhan. Photo: UNICC/Cadinu

UNICC is the biggest Agency in the base (with nearly 300 personnel in its Centre of Excellence and Common Secure Operations Centre, or CSOC), and is also the biggest UN Agency in Spain. The Centre of Excellence covers many strategic areas of digital business solution delivery, from cyber security, data and analytics, innovative new technologies as well as ongoing operational services. UNICC acknowledges Spain’s efforts to provide the required space to accommodate the continuous growth of the organization.

I want to affirm our commitment to work on the expansion of this centre, attracting more and more the various United Nations Agencies to transform or to continue transforming this centre into the technological and communicational heart of the most important activities that we develop for the benefit of the populations most impacted by the difficult times that we are living.

António Guterres, UN Secretary-General

Celebration participants included among others:

  • António Guterres, UN Secretary-General
  • Arancha González Laya, Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain
  • Ximo Puig, President of the Generalitat Valenciana
  • Carmen Martínez Ramírez, Mayor of Quart de Poblet (the town where the base is located)
  • Atul Khare, Under-Secretary General for Operational Support, UN Department of Operational Support
  • Giovanna Ceglie, Director of the United Nations Global Service Centre (UNGSC)
  • Sameer Chauhan, Director, UNICC
  • Michel Bergeron, Head of Premises of the United Nations Information and Communications Technology Facility in Valencia (UNICTF) and Chief of Service for Geospatial, Information and Telecommunications Technologies (SGITT)

The agenda followed the Secretary-General’s itinerary. He was received in the airport by the USG and Minister of Foreign Affairs. The President of the Generalitat de Valencia, the Director of UN GSC, the Director of UNICC and the Mayor of Quart de Poblet met and greeted him.

The Secretary-General and the Minister of Foreign Affairs then unveiled a commemorative plaque for the 10th anniversary of the base. The group went to the cafeteria where the Secretary-General was briefed about the expansion of the base and inclusion of new Agencies. In the cafeteria, there was a press briefing by the UN Secretary-General, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and the President of the Generalitat Valenciana.

The group walked around the cafeteria visiting the booths, including UNICC’s, where the Secretary-General talked with Sameer Chauhan, Prado Nieto, Mati Gil, Esther Ferrer, Liliana Hedges, Martina Kellen and others from UNICC.

In a separate session later that afternoon, the Secretary-General met with the youth of Spain at the City of Arts and Sciences. Among the select group of twenty youth were five UNICC interns.

Young people must have a say in the decisions that affect their future.

António Guterres, UN Secretary-General

They held a roundtable discussion on topics including reinforcement of multilateralism to fight global challenges and COVID-19, the digital revolution, global inequality, rightful work for youth and action for climate change.

Photo: UNICC/Cadinu and UN

The UN Support Base celebratory event was an affirming testament to the good work that UNICC delivers to its more than 70 Clients and Partner Organizations and also provided an opportunity for UNICC to share its success stories and digital business solutions with UN leadership, the Spanish government, the UN Support Base, the town of Quart de Poblet, the city of Valencia, the country of Spain and the wider world.

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SDG 5: Gender Equality in Action: Award Winning Data Visualisation by All-Women Team in UNICC’s Global Hackathon

Posted on | by Ha Young Kwon

2020 marked the 75-year anniversary of the United Nations as it continues to speak for international peace and security, deliver humanitarian assistance to those in need, protect human rights and uphold international law. The year also marked the 50th anniversary of UNICC and the five-year anniversary of the launch of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, a framework for all UN entities and related NGO partner organizations to follow and work collaboratively. 

As a UN organization, UNICC aligns with these goals in its delivery of projects and services to its 70+ Clients and Partner Organizations, particularly in its ability to meld technology with mission. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres aptly explains this necessary occurrence: “For the UN to deliver better on our mandate in the digital age, we need to embrace technologies that can help accelerate the achievement of the SDGs.”

UNICC’s 2021 Global Hackathon: Data for Good provided an excellent use case for technology for good, including the victory of Team QC Data Oriented, winner of the UN75 Visualisation Challenge. Encouraged by professors Dr. Sophia Catsambis and Dr. Yin Zhou, City University of New York, Masters students Rachel Ramphal, Habiba Aziz, Esther Jenaro Rabadan registered for the Hackathon under as an all-woman team, right away supporting SDGs 5 for gender equality.

Credit: UNICC

UNICC’s Global Hackathon: Data for Good launched on Tuesday, 16 February 2021 with an introduction from the organization’s executive leadership to a global audience of UNICC and other UN organizations’ staff members, university representatives and over 140 students. Following the introductory remarks from UNICC’s Director Sameer Chauhan and Chief of Digital Business Solutions Ninna Roco, Anusha Dandapani, Chief of Data Analytics, introduced the three challenges of the hackathon: COVID-19 Open Challenge, Refugee Crisis: Predict Forced Displacement, and the UN75 Visualisation Challenge.

From the beginning of the hackathon, team QC Data Oriented knew that they wanted to specifically create a solution around data visualisation – with this in mind, the all-female team centered their research and graphs around SDG 5 (gender equality). Rachel, Habiba and Esther joined forces to dig through UN data sets related to gender parity, such as data on UN organizations’ monetary expenses and investments by year towards combatting the issue of gender inequality. 

Credit: UNICC

The team also shared a visualisation on the percentage of women in international migration, showing data from 1990 and 2017 and compared the number of female migrants from varying countries with increases or decreases in movement. The visualisation served as a powerful reminder of the interdisciplinary nature of sustainable development and how a single Global Goal, SDG 5 (gender equality), can apply to issues such as international migration.

The panel of esteemed UN judges asked about a specific visualization: the prioritization of gender parity across the UN ecosystem. Qualitative data from surveys reveal the general attitude towards prioritizing issues of gender parity: there is quite a large gap between believing accomplishing SDG 5 today is essential and believing it to become a priority in the next 25 years. 

This discrepancy interested the judges, as it belies an organization’s development in attitude towards discrete SDGs. By presenting this data, the team successfully highlighted the contrast in organizational priorities as to where progress is necessary.

Credit: UNICC

The victory of team QC Data Oriented in the UN75 Visualisation Challenge speaks to a greater message that extends beyond the context of the Data for Good: Global Hackathon. As all-female team winners in a hackathon in a field infamous for the lack of gender parity, Rachel, Habiba and Esther defy the constraints of the very goal on which they successfully presented. 

“My team went into the competition very nervous about our skills measuring up to our peers around the world, but we wanted to participate and try our best. If we had decided to give up, we would not have reached the finals and won our challenge. So, I will take away from this to continue working hard and believing in my capabilities – I hope to take away that no challenge is too big for me.”

Rachel Ramphal, Team QC Data Oriented

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This article is part of a series of stories from the first UNICC Global Hackathon: Data for Good that took place in February 2021. The hackathon drew registrations from a total of 140 students from 54 universities located in 13 countries around the globe, all of whom came together to tackle three major UN related challenges: COVID-19 Open Challenge, Refugee Crisis: Predict Forced Displacement, and the UN75 Visualisation Challenge. To learn more about this successful event and its wonderful finalists, please refer to this article here.