Seton Hall Graduate Degree in International Affairs
Seton Hall Graduate Degree in International Affairs

BLUE SMOKE: A new monthly newsletter, from PassBlue and UNA–UK, which shines a spotlight on senior appointments at the UN

Barbara Crossette

Barbara Crossette is the senior consulting editor and writer for PassBlue and the United Nations correspondent for The Nation. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has also contributed to the Oxford Handbook on the United Nations.

Previously, Crossette was the UN bureau chief for The New York Times from 1994 to 2001 and previously its chief correspondent in Southeast Asia and South Asia. She is the author of "So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas," "The Great Hill Stations of Asia" and a Foreign Policy Association study, "India Changes Course," in the Foreign Policy Association's "Great Decisions 2015."

Crossette won the George Polk award for her coverage in India of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and the 2010 Shorenstein Prize for her writing on Asia.

It was billed as a grand ceremony staged by the United Nations Association of Germany to award its biennial Otto Hahn Peace Medal to Navi Pillay, marking her decades of groundbreaking work in human rights and international criminal law,…
 
Nations of the world have taken giant steps in recent decades to build international structures and strengthen institutions to deal with mass human-rights abusers. At almost every stage, Navi Pillay, a South African lawyer, was there, advancing the rights…
 
Amid mounting reports of Ukrainian children being forcibly deported to Russia during Moscow’s brutal war against the country and its culture, savvy Ukrainian technocrats are launching a tool to fight back in cyberspace. An interactive public website will soon…
 
Among governments and international organizations worldwide there is a refrain that the catastrophic collapse of Myanmar is a regional problem to be solved primarily by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The 10-member group, known as Asean, remains deeply…
 
Kathy Gannon never wanted to be a journalist. That changed when she was urged by a journalist brother to give the profession a try. She became a successful reporter and editor of local newspapers in Ontario and British Columbia….
 
Maria Shust, director of the 56-year-old Ukrainian Museum, in New York City, above. Putin is not only demolishing Ukraine’s infrastructure and murdering civilians but it is also singling out artists and arts institutions because, as Shust said in an…
 
In India, a country of probing and often rambunctious political debate, another chapter in the “who we are” story has started in the wake of what President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is calling a Russian “war of annihilation” of…
 
Rebeca Grynspan, the first woman and first Latin American to lead the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, has a lot of work to do. The organization, founded in 1964 as a standing committee, now has 195 member…
 
Prime Minister Kaja Kallas of Estonia, a small Baltic nation with a tragic history of living with Russia, has become a leading European voice demanding that no breathing space or second chances be given to Vladimir Putin as his…
 
At a moment past midnight on Nov. 30, the island nation of Barbados severed its last direct links to colonial Britain and became a republic to the celebratory music of brass bands and Caribbean steel drums. Queen Elizabeth II,…
 
A year after the Burmese military overthrew the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, horrifying statistics of death, torture, detention and disappearance of civilians continue to mount. As of Jan. 19, according to the Assistance Association for…
 
For decades, amid genocidal wars and gender violence that tore apart the lives and bodies of girls and women, Denis Mukwege, facing repeated threats to his own life, worked as a medical doctor in poor, broken communities in the…
 
Far from Kabul in rural Afghanistan, where an economic crisis and a bitterly cold winter threaten starvation, communities with few resources have been reopening schools for girls up to grade 12. Collectively, these add up to an expansion of…
 
The images are stark: In India, Hindu widows who are considered burdens by their families are being abandoned at temples on the banks of sacred rivers. In Ethiopia, homeless older women evicted by their relatives sleep on the steps…
 
It is not news that morale in the American State Department hit new lows during the Trump administration, under a president who despised and insulted the institutions and people engaged in international affairs. On Oct. 27, however, Secretary of…
 
The Women's History Month Quiz from PassBlue: A quiz about women and the UN
Seton Hall Graduate Degree in International Affairs

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