Development

UN-75: The Moment to Build a More Inclusive World Order Is Here

María Fernanda Espinosa and Tijjani Muhammad-Bande

• October 24, 2020

Since its founding 75 years ago, the United Nations has proven, with the support of its member countries and other partners, its worth in complex problem-solving. That includes preventing great-power wars, remedying humanitarian emergencies, safeguarding human rights and reducing extreme poverty. But as we commemorate UN Day, with world leaders having marked the world …

Development, Disarmament, Governance, Health and Population, Human Rights, SDGs

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The UN’s 12th Nobel Peace Prize: Our Latest Podcast Episode

Stéphanie Fillion and Kacie Candela

• October 16, 2020

Clair MacDougall was reporting on a follow-up story for PassBlue about Lieut. Col. Carlos Moisés Guillén Alfaro, the first official United Nations peacekeeper to die of Covid-19, when on Oct. 9 she heard that the World Food Program was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and that its executive director, David Beasley, was in town, so she …

Africa, Development, Humanitarian Aid, US-UN Relations

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Women’s Rights Are Human Rights: How Equality Became a US Foreign Policy Priority

Rebecca Turkington and Melanne Verveer

• October 14, 2020

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Twenty-five years ago this month, tens of thousands of women (and some men) gathered in Beijing for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. It was a profound moment in the history of women’s rights, convening 5,000 official delegates from nearly every country in the world and more than 30,000 …

Development, Gender Violence, Human Trafficking, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, Women

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WORLDVIEWS

What the Post-Pandemic World Could Look Like: A View From the Global South

Celso Amorim and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

• October 5, 2020

The world order is no more. Since the beginning of this year, and with greater intensity since March, when the World Health Organization declared the spread of Covid-19 a pandemic, governments and civil societies have been grappling with a crisis of almost unseen proportions. Lives are being lost by the thousands in a single …

Development, Governance, Health and Population, WORLDVIEWS

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COVID-19

Wanted: Small Investors to Boost Development Money Beyond Banks

Barbara Crossette

• August 31, 2020

For nearly two years, an international group of 17 specialists on the finance frontier have been connecting digital technologies to new sources of money for the faltering Sustainable Development Goals. On Aug. 26, they unveiled an ambitious report on what can be done when traditional pools of capital are broadened and deepened by including …

Covid-19, Development, SDGs

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COVID-19

The Pandemic’s Cruelty Visits the World’s Children

Barbara Crossette

• June 18, 2020

There are about two billion young children in the world today, ranging from infancy to 14 years old, and most of them live in developing nations in the global south. That is also where the Covid-19 pandemic is spreading the fastest. Three of the top 10 countries in numbers of rapidly rising cases, as of …

Covid-19, Development, Education, Secretary-General

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WORLDVIEWS

Can UN Development Be Reformed? Not at This Rate

Stephen Browne

• January 6, 2020

GENEVA — Like his predecessors, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has been pushing a reform program to help the organization adjust to the demands of contemporary global governance. Over nearly 75 years, the UN has innovated and adapted. At first, humanitarian assistance was not envisaged to go beyond the needs of people displaced by …

Development, SDGs, WORLDVIEWS

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

Barbara Crossette

• 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 …