• Javier Pérez de Cuéllar

    WORLDVIEWS

    Who Says the UN Is Boring? Intrigue Always Abounds in Its Inner Core

    by  • March 20, 2018 • Secretary-General, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS • 

    Bureaucracies do not have a great reputation, and the United Nations bureaucracy is no exception. They are seen as inefficient, cumbersome and rigid, adjectives that are also routinely associated with the UN Secretariat. At best considered a “necessary evil,” bureaucracies tend to attract scorn rather than analysis. The UN Secretariat, however, is different. Although...

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    WORLDVIEWS

    Thank You, UN, for Defending Our Human Rights Against Gross Violations

    by  • January 30, 2018 • Human Rights, WORLDVIEWS • 

    From 1970 to 2000, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the predecessor to today’s Human Rights Council, considered in closed meetings and acted on some 80 country situations where there were reliable allegations of gross violations of human rights. In parallel, the UN Decolonization Committee and the Special Committee Against Apartheid gathered information,...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

    Sexual Harassment at the UN Is Alive and Persistent

    by  • December 22, 2017 • Gender-Based Violence, Human Rights, Secretary-General, UN Diplomats, Women • 4 Comments

    As its people of the year, Time magazine recently named the Silence Breakers — people who have spoken against sexual harassment and launched the hashtag #MeToo into an international phenomenon with more than seven million hits on social media. Just before the announcement, more than 230 women who work in national security for the...

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    What Matters Most in Choosing the Next UN Chief? Politics, Geography and Maybe Gender

    by  • January 21, 2015 • Secretary-General, Security Council, US-UN Relations • 

    The post of United Nations secretary-general may or may not be “the world’s most impossible job,” as its first occupant, Trygve Lie, a Norwegian, once described it. In any case, UN members must choose a successor to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon well before the close of 2016. Some potential candidates are already campaigning for the...

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