BOOKS

A Fresh Look Back at Two UN Deaths in the Congo

• January 15, 2022

Nearly five years after the murder of two United Nations investigators in a rough and lonely patch of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, their lives and their deaths have become a metaphor for the extraordinary challenges faced by the UN and other international actors promoting peace in the world’s most forlorn and unsavory …

Africa, BOOKS, UN Peacekeeping

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BOOKS

Overcoming Childhood Poverty and UN Bureaucracy, Noeleen Heyzer Tells Her Story

Barbara Crossette

• August 7, 2021

Noeleen Heyzer not only saved Unifem, the precursor of UN Women, from financial collapse but also turned the small grant-making agency into a powerful policy tool for boldly addressing the crushing economic and social disadvantages that silence women worldwide. She understood women in distress; echoes of her own early life resonated in what she …

Asia, BOOKS, Gender Violence

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BOOKS

New Pressures Are Shaping Environmental Debates, a Leader Says

Barbara Crossette

• June 5, 2021

For half a century, Gus Speth has been at the forefront of the global environmental movement as an adviser on environment policy to two United States presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and then administrator of the United Nations Development Program, under Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan. Speth was also a civil society leader …

BOOKS, Climate Change

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BOOKS

Ban Ki-moon Tells All: He Was Miserable Watching Trump Run Wild

Irwin Arieff

• March 2, 2021

Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in a memoir due out in June, is done concealing his anger over Donald Trump’s bad behavior on the international stage. The UN has always tried hard to maintain strong ties with the United States, its biggest dues-payer and the world’s leading superpower. And Ban, it seems, was …

BOOKS, Nuclear Disarmament, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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BOOKS

An Irish-American Idealist: Samantha Power

Lucia Mouat

• July 18, 2020

In her enjoyable memoir, “The Education of an Idealist,” Samantha Power shifts easily between her family life and her challenging career adventures. She draws on her Irish roots in storytelling — coming to the United States from Dublin at age 9 with her mother and younger brother. And she makes no effort along the …

BOOKS

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BOOKS

Trump Is So Scary He Makes Even Bolton Look Good

Irwin Arieff

• June 29, 2020

I never thought I would ever feel sorry for Nikki Haley. But John Bolton, in his infamous new book, “The Room Where It Happened,” is so unrelenting in his snide comments about Haley, President Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, that you have to draw back and think, Wait a minute, why is …

BOOKS, US Foreign Relations

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BOOKS

A Most Influential Actor: The US Ambassador to the UN

Helmut Volger

• February 1, 2020

Everyone familiar with the United Nations knows that its relationship with its key member, the United States, has been and still is subject to far-reaching changes. The periods when the US administration and the Congress make use of the competencies of the United Nations in shaping their foreign policies depend on the administration and …

BOOKS, US-UN Relations

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BOOKS

The All-Female Korean Hockey Team That Won the World’s Heart

Sonah Lee-Lassiter

• December 28, 2019

“A Team of Their Own: How an International Sisterhood Made Olympic History,” unfolds like the cinematic story of Disney’s 1992 hit “The Mighty Ducks,” except in Seth Berkman’s debut book this team of hockey players —South Korean, North Korean, American and Canadian, all female and of Korean descent — don’t win a single game. …

Asia, BOOKS

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BOOKS

Nikki Haley Makes Her Choice: She’s a Forever Trumper

Irwin Arieff

• November 19, 2019

“With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace,” is framed as a look back at Nikki Haley’s two years as United States ambassador to the United Nations. It’s also not unreasonable to assume she’s just ticking off one more box before an eventual run for high office: Quit your government job, start …

BOOKS, US-UN Relations

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BOOKS

Why This American Still Cherishes the UN

Stephen Schlesinger

• November 2, 2019

Americans should know more about the life of William vanden Heuvel, a former United States envoy to the United Nations office in Geneva in the late 1970s. His career of social and political activism has touched on the people of his country on issues ranging from prison reform to school desegregation — but especially …

BOOKS, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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BOOKS

Northern Ireland’s Ghosts, Living in Plain Sight

Aaron Stanley

• August 24, 2019

When driving through the tight, winding rural roads of Northern Ireland (or is it the north of Ireland?), you pass through quaint, sleepy little towns. Most barely have a High Street. But if you didn’t know any better, you’d think there was an important sporting event most days. It isn’t unusual to see a …

BOOKS

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BOOKS

In the Far-Flung African Diaspora, Writing by Women Flourishes

Barbara Crossette

• June 16, 2019

Margaret Busby is a pioneer in the literary world. In 1967, she became the first black woman to start a publishing company in Britain. The small company, Allison & Busby, was co-founded with Clive Allison, when both were recent university graduates. At first, it focused on poetry. Over the years, however, Busby, who was …

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BOOKS

Mexico City, 1975: When the Year of the Woman Was Born

Ellen Chesler

• October 13, 2018

From 1975 to 1995, the United Nations sponsored four international conferences on women that produced wildly optimistic blueprints for concrete gains. Some people dismiss these forums and the programs for action that they generated as lacking strategies to carry them out. Others insist that the conferences raised awareness, shaped aspirations, fostered activism and, in …

BOOKS, Development, Gender Violence

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BOOKS

An Eloquent Homage to Syria’s Past, in Case It Has No Future

Irwin Arieff

• June 16, 2018

As one of the world’s oldest areas of human settlement, Syria has seen it all: glory and irrelevance, conflict and calm, dynamism and stagnation, tyranny and tolerance. While it has gone through long periods of international obscurity — pretty much ignored by the Roman and Ottoman Empires, for example — it has at times …

BOOKS

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BOOKS

The UN Is Complicated, So Here is a Dictionary to Help Figure It Out

Helmut Volger

• June 2, 2018

To provide readers who want information about the United Nations that is intelligent and concise yet comprehensive is a challenging task for every author: he or she must outline a puzzling system of principal organs, specialized agencies, programs, funds, commissions and committees that produces large piles of resolutions, declarations and conventions on topics such …