Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

• January 18, 2021

This year, two expansive — and expensive — international peace and security entities will pass a significant milestone. The United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the NATO operation in Afghanistan have been deployed for two decades. Although these missions differ in many respects, notably in the scale and …

Africa, Asia, Security Council, UN Peacekeeping, WORLDVIEWS

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Feminists Made the Difference: How Women Won National Leadership Roles

Torild Skard

• April 23, 2017

Hillary Clinton did not make it to the top, but Theresa May, the British prime minister, and Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, did. Since Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the world’s first female prime minister, in Sri Lanka in 1960, one-hundred women have been heads of state or government around the world. How did they get …

Governance, Women

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BOOKS

Misogyny Didn’t Stop Them: The World’s Most Important Female Leaders

Joanne Myers

• April 1, 2017

From Asia and Africa to Europe and the Americas, women remain important forces of change as government leaders in the modern era. Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister after its independence, was one of the earliest — and the only woman in India — to hold that position, from 1966 …

BOOKS

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WORLDVIEWS

Female Politicians in Africa Face Threats After They Leave Office

Deborah Harding and K. Riva Levinson

• June 13, 2016

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The world celebrates women political leaders when they ascend, but what happens after they leave office and their lives are threatened? Don’t we have a duty to protect? Take the case of Joyce Banda, a former president of Malawi. Since leaving office, Banda has found herself in the cross-hairs of the …

WORLDVIEWS

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For UN Member Nations, ‘Vulnerability Is a Global Phenomenon’

Dulcie Leimbach

• September 24, 2013

The annual United Nations debate of the 68th General Assembly got off to a contentious start on Sept. 24 with pointedly worded but divergent speeches by Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, and Barack Obama, the president of the United States. The two countries traditionally kick off the annual debate, held every September in New York …

General Assembly

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BOOKS

Judging Charles Taylor

Irwin Arieff

• April 24, 2012

Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, displayed a talent for troublemaking from a young age. Convicted on April 26 by a United Nations-backed tribunal for numerous counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Taylor appears to have kept up his bad behavior for most of his 64 years. As a boy in rural …

BOOKS, Child Soldiers

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Leaving Liberia, a ‘Fragile State’

Dulcie Leimbach

• March 19, 2012

Top United Nations officials generally wait until they leave their jobs before they speak candidly about the conditions they faced and the problems that remain. So Ellen Margrethe Loj, who has ended her four years as UN special envoy in Liberia, did not mince words in New York about Liberia’s painful recovery and challenging …