Laura E. Kirkpatrick
Laura E. Kirkpatrick is an editor, writer and researcher who has covered international, national and civic social enterprise and development, women's issues and the media for Gannett Publications, ESPN and other media outlets. Based in Buffalo, N.Y., Kirkpatrick wrote PassBlue's most popular article in 2015, "In New York State, a City Willing to Settle Refugees the Right Way"; in 2017, her story on sexual harassment at the UN was also among the top 5 for the year. Kirkpatrick also manages social media and audience development for PassBlue. She received a New Media Editorial Fellowship from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and has a graduate degree in journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in English from Hamilton College.
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • February 28, 2023
In a follow-up to our recent analysis on the status of gender parity among United Nations senior-level appointments, which found that almost half of them replaced a woman with a man, we look now at the senior leadership of…
- Categories: UN Peacekeeping, Women
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • January 5, 2023
António Guterres has finished the first year of his second five-year term as secretary-general of the United Nations. During his original term, from 2017-2022, he publicly avowed to bring gender parity to the UN. Recently, speaking on the fifth…
- Categories: Secretary-General, Women
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • September 19, 2022
As education across the world faces tremendous challenges from the three C’s: climate change, conflicts and Covid-19, hitting the world’s youngest and most vulnerable children the hardest, the United Nations tackled the problem in a three-day summit that culminated…
- Categories: Education, General Assembly, Secretary-General
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • August 15, 2022
When she was only 10 years old, Gertrude Oforiwa Fefoame realized that she could no longer read her classroom’s blackboard at her school in eastern Ghana. She eventually learned that she had retinal dystrophy, an irreversible degenerative condition that…
- Categories: Disabilities, Women as Changemakers
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • October 20, 2021
Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond, a Chilean who has had a long career with the United Nations, remains a controversial figure among some staff members, stemming from a UN inquiry into his workplace behavior that began in December 2020. Certain countries…
- Categories: Secretary-General, UN Special Envoys
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • August 10, 2021
As outbreaks of Covid-19 cases spike again in many places worldwide, the United Nations Secretariat in New York City faces reopening decisions that pit some staff members’ interests against those of UN member states. Pressure is coming from UN…
- Categories: Covid-19, General Assembly, Secretary-General, UN Agencies
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • March 22, 2021
The United Nations’ top agency for humanitarian aid is poised for a new boss to arrive, one who could instill a management style far removed from what some of its staffers call a “neocolonial mind-set” under the outgoing head,…
- Categories: Humanitarian Aid, Secretary-General, UN Agencies
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • January 27, 2021
Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond has just been named as the United Nations first-ever technology envoy. Hochschild, a Chilean national who has been with the UN since 1988, has served the organization in numerous jobs in the field, starting in Sudan,…
- Categories: Gender Violence, General Assembly, Human Rights
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • December 31, 2020
How bad was 2020? So awful that Match.com made a commercial in which a woman named 2020 falls in love with the Devil and they live happily ever after. As annoying as it is that 2020 is portrayed as…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Women
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • August 25, 2020
If pundits were to be believed earlier in August, there was a chance for a historic vice-presidential debate in 2020: two women of color facing off for the second-highest position in the United States. The speculation was that Nikki…
- Categories: Covid-19, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • July 23, 2020
BUFFALO, N.Y. — In the middle of a recent Zoom meeting with colleagues, I commented about the presence of United Nations flags on international borders, like the ones that flew, some until recently, on certain bridge border crossings between…
- Categories: Covid-19, US Foreign Relations
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • March 23, 2020
António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, continues to go into the UN headquarters building in New York City to work — even as Covid-19 races throughout the region. “Right now, Guterres is probably the safest man on the planet,”…
- Categories: Covid-19, Health and Population, Secretary-General
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • January 26, 2020
This year will be an urgent moment for the United Nations and its 193 member countries to renew their commitment ensuring women’s equality in all walks of life. Twenty-five years have passed since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for…
- Categories: Gender Violence, US-UN Relations, Women
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • November 24, 2019
Although the first hearings by the Intelligence Committee in the House of Representatives in the Trump impeachment inquiry may be over, one remarkable aspect stands out: the heroic way the female foreign service officers and policy specialists who testified…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Women
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • October 25, 2019
Tulsi Gabbard, the United States Democratic representative from Hawaii, met with Donald Trump immediately after his election in November 2016. Gabbard became one of the first people to talk to him and his Republican camp at their base in…
- Categories: US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations
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