Once again, 2019 marked incredible upheaval and change across the world, just as 2018 did so universally, signaled by the continued rise in nationalism and revolts by women against repression and violence in their daily lives. Reporting on how United Nations member states — all 193 of them — acted in 2019 was a challenge … Read more The Top 10 PassBlue Stories of 2019: From Strongmen to Sexual Harassment
This year was a big one for China, and 2020 is likely to be much the same — if not more intense, given the range of issues involving the United States and far beyond. For our last episode of the year, UN-Scripted looks at how China’s rise internationally is reflected at the United Nations. To … Read more China’s UN Playground & Talking Gender With the UN’s Rosemary DiCarlo: Our Latest Episode
African summits may be in vogue worldwide, and Russia’s recent summit in Sochi in late October was no exception. A PassBlue correspondent, Joe Penney, traveled to the Black Sea resort to report on President Vladimir Putin’s pitch to African leaders, as he promoted a second African independence, this time a financial one, with offers of … Read more Russia in Africa and Frank Talk on Feminist Foreign Policies: Our Latest Podcast Episode
SOCHI, Russia — As the Turkish presidential plane carried President Recep Tayyip Erdogan across the Black Sea from Sochi, Russia, back to Ankara last week, dozens of African heads of state arrived in this resort city for the inaugural Russia-Africa Summit the next morning. During two days at a convention center in the Olympic Village … Read more Of Oil and Kalashnikovs: At the First Russia-Africa Summit, Putin Makes Power Plays
Anywhere from the capital of Nicosia, day and night, Greek Cypriots can see a giant flag painted into the mountains in the north, in a separate region that calls itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. It is an area that is recognized only by Turkey and isolated internationally. From the Greek side of the … Read more The Moment to End Turkey’s Other War, in Cyprus, Is Fading Fast
Just days after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt met with President Trump in the White House, receiving an effusive reception, Trump nominated Jonathan R. Cohen, the acting permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations, as ambassador to Egypt. Cohen, who has been a Foreign Service officer since 1986, is from Southern … Read more Trump Nominates the Current UN Envoy as Ambassador to Egypt
After fleeing violence and unemployment in their home country for the relative stability of neighboring Iran, hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans are now returning home. The mass reverse migration is taking place just as the United States, eager to withdraw from Afghanistan, holds its most concerted peace talks with the Taliban in years. The … Read more Afghan Migrants Flee Iran as US Sanctions Damage Iran’s Economy
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 As His Country Wages War, President Hadi of Yemen Still Travels to US for Health Care
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 The US, Reversing Course on Cluster Bombs, Is Testing New Ones in Israel
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 As Nicaragua Slides Deeper Into Dictatorship, Other Nations Grow Alarmed
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 Trump Wants a New ‘Liberal’ World Order, Pompeo Tells Europe
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 The US Is Driving the New Talks on Western Sahara, Involving Morocco and Algeria
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 Pressures Mount for UN to Create a Probe Into Khashoggi Murder
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 Striking a Better Balance in the Newest UN Peacekeeping Reforms
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 Nations Face an Era of Chaos as Trump Offends the World at the UN
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 Europe and Others Help Fund the UN Palestinian Agency, Filling US Void
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 In a First, Trump Chairs the UN Security Council, but Nothing Happened
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 At the UN, Trump Declares: America Embraces ‘Patriotism’
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 Why Isn’t Canada’s Trudeau Speaking at the Main UN Forum This Year?
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 The UN Shudders as ‘Trump Week’ Closes In
