About

UN Blue People, officially known as “*No Excuses*”, is a series of animated videos published by the United Nations in 2011 intended to raise awareness about violence. The videos gained notoriety and became a subject of parody as many viewers found the videos out-of-touch and ineffective.

Origin

On 21 April 2011, the official YouTube channel of the United Nations uploaded 11 videos constituting a campaign titled “No Excuses”. The most-viewed video in the series, “Preventing rape by soldiers”, recieved 1,500,000 views in 15 years.

Background

The campaign was created by Canadian filmmaker Firdaus Kharas.^[2][3] On 18 April 2011, Kharas held a press conference about the campaign, which was uploaded to the United Nations online media repository^[1] and later to YouTube.

I am very pleased to be able to launch the 'No Excuses' Campaign after 2.5 years of work by a group of dedicated volunteers in Canada, Holland, South Africa and Switzerland. Domestic violence and abuse are insidious problems that reach into every corner of every country. These animated spots are not threatening or authoritarian. They do not further stigmatize the victims. Instead, the campaign uses humour and animation to create a range of messages that will cause behaviour change by speaking directly to the abuser and by being a catalyst to stimulate discussions in millions of households.

The campaign's videos were also dubbed and uploaded in a variety of different languages.^[4]

Spread

The first known reaction to the campaign was a reupload published in 2024. It recieved 1,300,000 views in 10 months.

Afterwards, several further videos were published in the form of parodies and YTP.

Examples

Search interest

References