WORLDVIEWS

Is It Only Mothers, Not All Women, Who Need Social Safety Nets?

• April 3, 2019

Social policy in developing countries provides crucial assistance to women, but evidence shows that it is increasingly being limited to women who are mothers. India is a vivid case in point. Associating women with children and families is hardly new in society. What is surprising, however, is how much recent social policy has embraced and …

Gender Violence, Poverty, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

Trump’s Not-So Secret Ill Will Toward the UN

Stephen Schlesinger

• March 21, 2019

More than six months ago, the American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, announced that she was leaving her post. Following her decision, President Trump nominated Heather Nauert to be her successor. Then the administration tarried, never submitted Nauert’s name for Senate approval — and in February abruptly withdrew her nomination. It put …

US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

US Abortion Restrictions Violate Women’s Human Rights

Serra Sippel and Akila Radhakrishnan

• March 14, 2019

Every year, 25 million women across the world are forced to obtain unsafe abortions. The United States, through its foreign policy, is deeply complicit in the violation of these women’s right to life and equality under international law. International human-rights frameworks guard against these violations and hold the US and other countries accountable. The International …

Gender Violence, Human Rights, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

How Will Britain’s Role Change in the UN as Brexit Brews?

Jess Gifkins, Jason Ralph and Samuel Jarvis

• February 26, 2019

LONDON — The looming departure of Britain from the European Union will have a significant effect on the country’s influence as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Even with a possible delay in the final Brexit move, Britain will have to navigate the 15-member Council in a new way that could …

General Assembly, Security Council, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

10 Ways to Push the Climate Change and Conflict Agenda, Despite the Deniers

Adriana Erthal Abdenur

• February 19, 2019

THE HAGUE — It is now well documented that global warming is a multiplier of insecurity and conflict, but holding debates on the topic presents ever-more complex challenges as multilateralism and climate change are increasingly questioned if not dismissed by some of the world’s top leaders and biggest polluting nations. In that light, here …

Climate and Environment, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

Why Developing Nations Send So Many Troops to UN Peace Ops

Thomas G. Weiss and Giovanna Kuele

• February 12, 2019

Africa, Asia and Latin America provide more than 90 percent of military and police personnel to United Nations peace operations and contribute about 15 percent of the budget. China, hardly a legitimate representative of the Global South as the world’s second-largest economy and a permanent member of the Security Council, inflates the budget number because its …

UN Peacekeeping, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

The Strange Bedfellows of Unesco World Heritage Sites

Jeffrey Laurenti

• February 11, 2019

In the fall — before the caravan, before the firings, before the shutdown, before the wall — Melania Trump concluded her first solo goodwill tour with a photogenic visit to the Great Pyramid and Sphinx of Egypt, the only surviving complex of the seven wonders of the ancient world. “It was a nice opportunity …

UN Agencies, Unesco, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS

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The Elusive Truth About the Death of Dag Hammarskjold and My Father

Hynrich W. Wieschhoff

• February 5, 2019

My clock radio clicked on. The morning news bulletin announced that United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane was missing. It was Sept. 18, 1961. I was 16. Over the next hours, my mother and sisters and I learned that Mr. Hammarskjöld, accompanied by Dad and 14 others, had flown from Leopoldville, in the Congo, …

Africa, Secretary-General, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

The UN’s Gender Parity Goals: The Backlash Begins

Anne Marie Goetz and Paige Arthur

• January 23, 2019

One year into the United Nations’ new strategy for gender parity among staff members at all levels, a gendered backlash has emerged, even as parity has been achieved at the highest echelons of the world body. Political will from UN leaders beyond the secretary-general and member states is needed to ensure that where the …

General Assembly, Secretary-General, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

Can Germany Mediate the Big-Power Divide in the UN Security Council?

Helmut Volger

• January 21, 2019

BERLIN — At the start of Germany’s sixth two-year term in the United Nations Security Council, the media attention in Germany is unusually high: numerous journalists on TV and radio are asking diplomats, politicians and foreign policy experts about their views on Germany’s role in the Council, as well as its goals and prospects …

Peace and Security, Security Council, WORLDVIEWS

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The G5 Sahel Force, Failing the Region and Failing Itself

Joe Penney

• December 16, 2018

BAMAKO, Mali — The G5 Sahel Force was conceived to enable greater coordination among five countries in the Sahel region of West Africa in fighting jihadist groups and to strengthen regional administration and development while relieving the United Nations mission in Mali of those burdens. Yet ever since the group — Burkina Faso, Chad, …

Africa, Security Council, US Foreign Relations, WORLDVIEWS

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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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When Is an Attack on UN Peacekeepers a War Crime and When Is It Not?

Mona Ali Khalil

• November 30, 2018

The recent attack by a militia on the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which seven peacekeepers were killed, highlighted a question that the Security Council has hesitated to confront for years. What are the consequences when UN peacekeeping missions become parties to the conflict? The Security Council responded to the latest attacks on Monusco, as …

Africa, UN Peacekeeping, WORLDVIEWS

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The Paris Peace Forum: A Davos for the People?

Richard Ponzio

• November 21, 2018

PARIS — Picking the right time, taking tips from social media, spotlighting both global bigwigs and civic groups and doing his best to rein Donald Trump back into the “community of nations”: these were just some of the ways that French President Emmanuel Macron tried to set the world straight on Nov. 11, Armistice …

WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

With US Leadership Gone, Japan and Europe Can Seize the Day

Yasuhiro Ueki

• November 15, 2018

We live in an age of uncertainty caused by the shifting structure and dynamics of international politics, economics and social change. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in his address to the General Assembly in September that this uncertainty was “a bad case of trust deficit disorder” at three levels. First, within countries, he …