Geopolitics Archives - PassBlue

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As His Country Wages War, President Hadi of Yemen Still Travels to US for Health Care

January 8, 2019December 31, 2018 by Dulcie Leimbach

President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi of Yemen

CLEVELAND, Ohio — On the main drag of Euclid Avenue in this Midwestern city sprawls the main campus of the Cleveland Clinic, the renowned hospital that attracts an estimated 2.5 million patients nationwide and abroad, including from the Middle East. That includes President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi of Yemen, who has heart troubles and whose … Read more

The US, Reversing Course on Cluster Bombs, Is Testing New Ones in Israel

January 4, 2019December 28, 2018 by Stéphanie Fillion

TEL AVIV — Every day in some provinces of Vietnam, the simple act of walking can be deadly, as people risk stepping on unexploded ordnances, remnants from America’s war there that ended more than 40 years ago. The United States dropped 14 million tons of explosive devices during the war in Vietnam as well as … Read more

As Nicaragua Slides Deeper Into Dictatorship, Other Nations Grow Alarmed

January 4, 2019December 26, 2018 by Barbara Crossette

In a rebuke to President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua on Dec. 21, governments of 14 democratic nations in Europe, the United States, Chile and Australia condemned the closing, banning or expulsion of civil-society organizations working on rights and governance issues in Nicaragua. The censure came as violence is again being used against Ortega’s critics. Young … Read more

Trump Wants a New ‘Liberal’ World Order, Pompeo Tells Europe

December 16, 2018December 6, 2018 by Barbara Crossette

They call it the “Trump effect” and it is permeating and weakening support for numerous international agreements still in their formative stages. For governments, diplomats and civil society around the world, accustomed to bombastic outbursts from Donald Trump, American policy appears to be consolidating into more than ad hoc attacks on efforts to tackle global … Read more

The US Is Driving the New Talks on Western Sahara, Involving Morocco and Algeria

December 13, 2018December 2, 2018 by Stéphanie Fillion

Horst Koehler, a former German president who has been the United Nations special envoy for Western Sahara since last year, is bringing the parties to the longstanding conflict over that region to a roundtable meeting in Geneva soon. Koehler expressed his intent last summer to bring all the relevant players together by the end of … Read more

Pressures Mount for UN to Create a Probe Into Khashoggi Murder

November 28, 2018November 19, 2018 by Barbara Crossette

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, right, with Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey's foreign minister, Nov. 19, 2018

Secretary-General António Guterres is now the focus of concerted demands for the United Nations to establish an independent international tribunal to investigate the brutal murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the country’s consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. International action has been stymied amid changing accounts from the Saudis, uncertainty over which party … Read more

Striking a Better Balance in the Newest UN Peacekeeping Reforms

October 11, 2018October 4, 2018 by Maria Luisa Gambale

Just days before the United Nations held a meeting with heads of state and foreign ministers on Secretary-General António Guterres’s Action for Peacekeeping initiative, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2436 on peace operations, on Sept. 21. Drafted by the United States, the resolution is the result of collaboration between Council members and other … Read more

Nations Face an Era of Chaos as Trump Offends the World at the UN

October 9, 2018October 3, 2018 by Barbara Crossette

The UN audience could only gasp when Donald Trump made his stormy debut in the United Nations General Assembly in 2017 as president of the United States. This year they laughed in his face. The gap between the US and the rest of the world has demonstrably widened under the Trump administration, and this phenomenon … Read more

Europe and Others Help Fund the UN Palestinian Agency, Filling US Void

October 2, 2018September 27, 2018 by Stéphanie Fillion

The European Union, Germany, Norway, Ireland and Kuwait stepped in this week to donate a total of $118 million in financing to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (Unrwa), after the United States cut $304 million of its annual support to the agency for this year. The … Read more

In a First, Trump Chairs the UN Security Council, but Nothing Happened

October 2, 2018September 26, 2018 by Kacie Candela

President Donald Trump chaired a United Nations Security Council meeting on stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction and seized the occasion again to lambaste Iran, which he had earlier this month intended to make the sole focus of the Sept. 26 session. Pushback came from most of the other Council members, who … Read more

At the UN, Trump Declares: America Embraces ‘Patriotism’

October 4, 2018September 25, 2018 by Laura E. Kirkpatrick

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, arrived late for the opening day of the 73rd United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 25. His speech began on an awkward note as he elicited laughter from the world audience for boasting about his accomplishments. During his speech, he also aggressively rejected the global approach to … Read more

Why Isn’t Canada’s Trudeau Speaking at the Main UN Forum This Year?

September 30, 2018September 23, 2018 by Stéphanie Fillion

MONTREAL — When he took office in 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised, among other things, to bring Canada back as a leader on the world’s stage. “Canada is back,” he said after signing the Paris accord on climate change, in 2016. He addressed the last two United Nations General Assembly since then, but he … Read more

The UN Shudders as ‘Trump Week’ Closes In

September 27, 2018September 19, 2018 by Barbara Crossette

A year after his bombastic debut at the United Nations as president of the United States, Donald Trump returns on Monday, Sept. 24, to lead a US effort to spur global action to stem the narcotics and opioid plagues. Could the US be asking the UN for help this time? The morning meeting on drugs … Read more

Kashmir’s Long Tragedy Rears Its Head in the News and at the UN

September 16, 2018September 5, 2018 by Barbara Crossette

In his final months in office as United Nations high commissioner for human rights, the outspoken Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein did what no former holder of that office would or could do: he issued a blistering report on Indian abuses in the disputed territory of Kashmir. It is a story that Indian governments have long tried … Read more

Atrocity Crimes Are Being Committed by All Warring Parties in Yemen: UN Experts

September 12, 2018August 29, 2018 by Dulcie Leimbach

The numerous parties to the war in Yemen, which began in 2015, have perpetrated and continue to commit violations of international law by indiscriminately murdering civilians, blocking humanitarian-aid deliveries, arbitrarily detaining people and possibly torturing those imprisoned, recruiting child soldiers and raping women and men, according to a new report by a United Nations panel … Read more

Kofi Annan’s Path to Humanitarian Intervention

August 28, 2018August 22, 2018 by David L. Phillips

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who died on Aug. 18, in Switzerland, was deeply committed to peace and the UN Charter, as well as human rights and humanitarian action. He led a debate about harmonizing these principles and rebalancing the sovereignty of countries with the rights of people within them. During his 10 years as secretary-general, which … Read more

Rohingya Refugees Look to Washington and Find a Vacuum

August 9, 2018July 30, 2018 by Tino Calabia

This August marks a year since a military crackdown forced at least 700,000 Rohingya to flee Myanmar for Bangladesh, joining hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who had already taken refuge there, totaling 1.1 million people encamped in Cox’s Bazar, according to a Bangladesh count done this July. But you would never know from the Trump … Read more

Richard Falk on Palestine, Israel and the UN in the Trump Age

August 3, 2018July 24, 2018 by Dulcie Leimbach

Richard Falk is a well-known American academic and writer who from 2008 until 2014 was the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine since 1967, a post that invariably invites controversy. For Falk, who has never been shy of taking provocative stances, the work compelled him to declare, among other things, that Israel’s … Read more

Pompeo’s Visit to the UN Caps a Week of Dizzying Global Politics

July 31, 2018July 20, 2018 by Dulcie Leimbach

Capping a week of neck-wrenching U-turns by the president of the United States after his pro-Russia speech in Helsinki on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with the 15-member United Nations Security Council in New York on July 20 — to discuss North Korea. Pompeo and Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, … Read more

Washington to UN Refugee Agency: If You Want Our Money, Put Our Name on It

July 23, 2018July 10, 2018 by Stéphanie Fillion

The United States is the biggest donor to the UN Refugee Agency, and the Trump administration wants the world to know it. A new framework, or agreement, signed by the State Department and the refugee agency (UNHCR) requires it to acknowledge US contributions in most — and eventually all — of its public-information materials. What … Read more

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