In October, the United States and Russia will square off in a high-stakes election to decide who will be the next secretary-general of the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU) — helping to determine the future of Internet communications for five billion users worldwide. The Geneva-based ITU develops standards and practices that make possible key …
This week, we focus on how the UN is further rallying support to combat the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and the widespread condemnation against the killing of Al Jazeera’s reporter in Palestine. You are reading This Week @UN, summarizing the most pressing issues before the organization. The information is gathered from UN press briefings, PassBlue …
Mukesh Kapila has been shining a spotlight on a low-profile United Nations agency that was recently exposed by several media for possible corruption, based on Kapila’s explosive blog posts that began in early March on the UN entity. Kapila, a former UN senior official and a professor emeritus at the University of Manchester, has been …
Vladimir Putin published an essay last year stating that Russians and Ukrainians were “one people.” He wrote: “I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” Thirteen years earlier, in a 2008 meeting with President George W. Bush, Putin went further, telling Bush that Ukraine was “not a nation.” …
The presence of the Russian state-linked Wagner Group mercenaries in the diamond-rich Central African Republic has been bloody. Now it seems that Russia has used its power in the United Nations Security Council to protect its exploits and geostrategic interests in the African country, a nation hanging on by a thread. Given international outcry for …
The United States is making the tackling soaring prices of food commodities the main focus of its presidency of the United Nations Security Council in May. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the country’s permanent representative to the UN, elaborated on the topic at a press conference to mark the start of the rotating presidency. “You may recall …
This week, we report on the UN secretary-general’s Sahel region trip as he took the message of global peace and security to Niger, Nigeria and Senegal, and the momentous evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, Ukraine. You are reading This Week @UN, summarizing the most pressing issues before the organization. The information is gathered from UN …
Everything about Montagu’s Gusto is unexpected, from its name and the size and sweep of its menu to its location, on a nondescript stretch of Second Avenue near 35th Street, sandwiched between a reflexology salon and a Chinese takeout bizarrely named Profit. The menu’s breadth aside, this modest spot (14 minutes by foot from the …
Xiomara Castro, Honduras’s first woman president, is brandishing an ambitious agenda whose top priorities include reforming the Constitution and elevating women’s rights. Yet the success of Castro, a 62-year-old former first lady, depends heavily on how well she manages Honduras’s complicated relationship with the United States. The stakes are high for both countries, and top …
VIENNA — The International Atomic Energy Agency expressed “grave concern” recently about the safety at Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant, in Zaporizhzhia, and said that the situation for the Ukrainian personnel working there was “unsustainable.” The plant was captured by Russian forces in a dramatic assault on March 4. Ever since then, Ukrainian staff continue …
This week, reporting on the UN’s efforts to help evacuate people still trapped in Mariupol as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine heads into its 10th week. So far, the UN hasn’t revealed any progress on its humanitarian corridor goal as the mayor of Mariupol pleads desperately for the city to be rescued. You are reading This …
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has paused his plan to further outsource the management of the $86 billion UN pension fund’s assets to Wall Street. The plan to allow an additional 18 percent of the fund’s assets to investment companies would have doubled the amount already being privatized. Questions also have arisen about the fund’s …
CALABAR, Nigeria — In March 2020, when schools in Nigeria closed their doors to flatten the surging curve of coronavirus infection, the unintended consequence was that thousands of children and teenagers across the country became soft targets of sexual assault and rape. Celia*, 17, was one of them. On a sunny afternoon last December, Celia …
A major effort to reform the use of the veto in the United Nations Security Council came to fruition in a rare move on April 26, when the General Assembly adopted a resolution by consensus to raise the political cost of exercising the veto by the five permanent members of the Council: Britain, China, France, …
The Washington-based Feminist UN Campaign has been grading the performance of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres since 2017. And he’s not exactly excelling. The group’s 2021 report card gave him a big B-. In 2020, he at least earned a solid but boring B. Guterres’s performance declined in four areas, the campaign said: development of …
This week, the focus stays glued to Ukraine while a flicker of hope emerges in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, where children are getting new malaria vaccines. You are reading This Week @UN, summarizing the most pressing issues before the organization. The information is gathered from UN press briefings, PassBlue reporting and other sources. This week, …
Two months since Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in the country has recorded at least 2,224 civilian deaths and 2,897 injuries, as of April 19. The numbers, however, are likely to be much higher. In an email interview conducted on April 15, Matilda Bogner, the head of the …
Combined with the growing fears of irreversible climate change and emerging new Covid-19 variants and subvariants, stands an ominous “third C”: conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has triggered a refugee crisis on a scale not witnessed in Europe since the end of World War II. At the same time, civil wars in Africa and …
When it comes to fighting for democracy and climate change — two of Rep. Jamie Raskin’s top priorities — the whole thing feels a bit like a game of chicken and egg to the United States Democratic congressman. “On the one hand there is the planet, heating up quickly past the limit that is safe …
The United Nations has been widely criticized for failing to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Critics point out that Russia has vetoed every action in the Security Council to stymie or end the Russian attack. Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky even told the Council earlier this month that given its many standoffs, it might as …
Six decades after the unexplained death of United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold and 15 other people in a plane crash in Central Africa, a new discovery in French government archives may bring researchers closer to the truth and answer a famous Cold War riddle: Who killed Hammarskjold? The discovery of an important clue happened in …
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