UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe   

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, international pop star Shakira, speaks at an event in 2015 to urge leaders to join early childhood revolution. (file)

January 25, 2024   Culture and Education

Shakira has long helped raise awareness for the rights of the world’s most vulnerable children, so on the heels of the International Day of Education, marked annually on 24 January, we took a look at the Grammy-award winning singer’s work with the UN.

The youngest ever Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 2003, Shakira Mebarak has since been actively engaged in promoting early childhood education and development. In 2015, when the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted at the United Nations, Shakira took the floor and spoke about the critical early years of a child’s life.

“It is up to us to be the first society to eradicate poverty and bring justice and equality to the most disenfranchised people on Earth,” she said.

Watch UN Video’s latest episode of the Stories from the UN Archive series here.

Catch up on our #ThrowbackThursday Stories from the UN Archive series here, and watch episodes from UN Video’s playlist here, cultivated from the UN Audiovisual Library’s 49,400 hours of video and 18,000 hours of audio recordings. Join us next Thursday for another dive into history.