Development

For Census-Takers Worldwide, 2020 Could Be a Rough Year

• December 21, 2019

For more than a week, protesters of all faiths have been marching by the hundreds of thousands on the streets of many Indian cities and towns to condemn a divisive new citizenship law targeting Muslims across the South Asian region. The trouble had been brewing for months, after the Hindu nationalist government of Prime …

Development, Refugees, SDGs

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WORLDVIEWS

They Call It Multistakeholderism. Where Does That Leave the UN?

Harris Gleckman

• September 2, 2019

Global governance is slipping away from the United Nations. Whether it is in managing the Internet, where the UN’s governing structure offers only an advisory role for governments; or climate change, where the most exciting actions are now corporate-led partnerships outside the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; or the Gates Foundation-sponsored Gavi, The …

Development, Governance, SDGs, WORLDVIEWS

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As the SDGs Falter, the UN Turns to the Rich and Famous

Barbara Crossette

• July 23, 2019

The Sustainable Development Goals are in trouble. United Nations officials are concerned and say so publicly. Secretary-General António Guterres joined in raising an alarm in mid-July when he introduced the most recent official UN report. “It is abundantly clear that a much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social …

Climate Change, Development, Poverty, SDGs

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Reform Clouds Darken the Future of the UN Development Program

Barbara Crossette

• January 28, 2019

As the first effects of Secretary-General António Guterres’s ambitious organizational reform plans become apparent, former and current officials of the United Nations Development Program see the future of the internationally influential agency as uncertain if not in peril. Fears center on aspects of the reform plan for development that would allow more political interference …

Development, Health and Population, SDGs

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WORLDVIEWS

The Role of the Private Sector in Building Peace: It’s Essential

Graciana del Castillo

• December 11, 2018

Another year of Secretary-General António Guterres’s reform of the peace and security pillar of the United Nations is ending without fully addressing a main obstacle to peacebuilding in conflict-torn countries under UN intervention: sustainable economic recovery. The key question facing the UN is how to support economic reconstruction amid the political, security and social reforms …

Development, Secretary-General, WORLDVIEWS

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TAKE A LOOK

Numbers Are People: Where Will They Be in 2050?

Barbara Crossette

• November 8, 2018

Right now, the population of the world is growing, paradoxically, at both ends of the age spectrum, for different reasons and with different results. In the developed world, the widely reported concern is that fewer births, and longer lives among the old, whose numbers are rising, will altogether wreak havoc on social security and …

Development, Take a Look

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SECURITY COUNCIL PRESIDENCY

China’s Priorities in the UN Security Council: Peacekeeping

Stéphanie Fillion

• November 4, 2018

Welcome back to our monthly column, Security Council Presidency, providing insight into the United Nations Security Council member sitting in the rotating seat of the presidency every month and featuring a capsule of the country itself. The column kicked off in July when Sweden was president, led by the country’s ambassador to the UN, Olof …

Development, Security Council, Security Council Presidency

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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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WORLDVIEWS

Can the UN Finally Get Serious About Inefficiencies in Its Development System?

Max-Otto Baumann

• April 25, 2018

BONN, Germany — Member states of the United Nations are now negotiating reform proposals for the world body’s development system. In the latest draft resolution, they welcome the secretary-general’s proposal for “advancing common business operations” and “request” for their “implementation,” in line with earlier decisions by the General Assembly (a previous draft requested “full implementation”). …

Development, WORLDVIEWS

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A Hindu-Muslim Friendship That Helped Shape How the World Measured Poverty

Barbara Crossette

• March 6, 2018

They were two young men studying at Cambridge University when they met in the wake of the bloody Partition of British India. One was a Kashmiri-born Muslim and the other a Hindu-born Bengali. But the two, Mahbub ul Haq of Pakistan and Amartya Sen from India, soon formed an intellectual bond and deep friendship. …

Asia, Development

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TAKE A LOOK

Lessons From African Kings, Real and Imagined

Barbara Crossette

• March 1, 2018

As ticket sales for the film “Black Panther” rocketed into the stratosphere in the United States and around the world after its opening in February, a real king in the poor West African nation of Burkina Faso won a peace prize for his part in averting bloodshed in a political crisis. On Feb.23, Mogho …

Africa, Development, Governance, Take a Look

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GEOPOLITICS

China’s Notions of UN Reform: Filling the Growing Vacuum Left by the US

Kacie Candela

• January 3, 2018

China has presented its position on United Nations reform, and it aligns with Secretary-General António Guterres’s own agenda. It pushes for practicalities, such as a transparent process, a stronger peace and security pillar, streamlined internal management and more geographic diversity in hiring practices in peacekeeping and the UN Secretariat. “The world is undergoing major …

Asia, Development, Geopolitics, Peace and Security, SDGs

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WORLDVIEWS

Least-Developed Countries, a Status That Many Nations Can’t Leave Behind

Bill Buchanan

• January 1, 2018

Since 1971, the United Nations has recognized least-developed countries as those deemed highly disadvantaged in their development strides because of structural, historical and geographical reasons. The aim has been, and still is, to support these countries to graduate to higher levels of self-sufficiency and economic independence, not in the sense for a privileged minority …

Africa, Asia, Development, Poverty, WORLDVIEWS

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Come to Armenia: Russia Backs a UN Project to Develop Rural Tourism

Dulcie Leimbach

• November 21, 2017

BJNI, Armenia — The riverside village of Bjni possesses all the ingredients to blossom into a tourist haven for visitors new to this landlocked country in the South Caucasus and for Armenians themselves. What visitors don’t see right away in Bjni, where a $3 million Russian-financed United Nations tourism project is in the works, …

Development, Gender Violence

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Getting to Know Mediterranean Farmers: Agritourism Hits Sicily

Dulcie Leimbach

• October 17, 2017

BELPASSO, Italy — The Oasi di Francesca farm-stay hotel is situated in an unlikely spot here in Sicily, about a kilometer from an Italian naval air base and a half hour to the large port city of Catania in the east, facing the Ionian Sea. Among the acres of low-lying artichoke plants — as …