Kofi Annan
- Dawn Clancy
- • January 18, 2023

Hans Corell knows how to establish war crime tribunals. The Swede is a former top legal expert for the United Nations who served under Secretaries-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan and, on behalf of the institution, was instrumental in…
- Categories: General Assembly, ICC, International Justice, Security Council, US-UN Relations
- Irwin Arieff
- • February 1, 2022

Just as we were looking forward to the new year with hope in our hearts, things have already grown dicey. The chaotic images of the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan still reverberate around the world, continuing to raise big…
- Categories: Secretary-General
- Barbara Crossette
- • July 14, 2021

As the final round of the Generation Equality Forum was about to open in Paris in late June, some reporters, including from PassBlue, were directed by a few United Nations agencies most involved in the event, to ask their…
- Categories: Journalists, Secretary-General, Security Council, UN Careers
- Stephen Schlesinger
- • June 24, 2021

One of America’s greatest supporters of the United Nations, Ambassador William vanden Heuvel, died on June 15 in New York City at age 91. A son of European immigrants, vanden Heuvel grew up in the upstate city of Rochester,…
- Categories: UN Diplomats, US-UN Relations
- Thomas G. Weiss
- • June 16, 2021

António Guterres soon will be recrowned Secretary-General after Manhattan’s five-member Electoral College, the permanent members of the Security Council, send its recommendation to the General Assembly for a ceremonial vote. In 2016, his election was an unusually transparent process…
- Categories: SDGs, Secretary-General, WORLDVIEWS
- Maurizio Guerrero
- • May 27, 2021

The proposed selection of Rebeca Grynspan, a Costa Rican economist and former vice president of her country, to head the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development was made without consulting the core of the agency — the Group…
- Categories: Development, UN Agencies, US-UN Relations
- Barbara Crossette
- • May 9, 2021

It was all over in one crucial week. Barring an unforeseen hitch, António Guterres is the clear winner of a second, five-year term as secretary-general of the United Nations, beginning on Jan.1, 2022. This was not a surprise: he…
- Categories: Latin America, Secretary-General, Security Council, UN Peacekeeping, US-UN Relations
- Barbara Crossette
- • April 19, 2021

For more than a decade, from 2004 to 2017, Vijay Nambiar was a special adviser to United Nations secretaries-general Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon, charged with following events in Burma, which the military generals renamed Myanmar in 1989. A…
- Categories: Human Rights, Myanmar
- Sonah Lee-Lassiter
- • March 24, 2021

Unless a strong candidate backed by an influential member state comes forward soon, it looks unlikely that Secretary-General António Guterres will be denied a second term and that a woman could be elected to succeed him, starting in 2022….
- Categories: Secretary-General, Security Council, US-UN Relations, Women
- Alan Doss
- • March 23, 2021

GENEVA — One of the quiet pleasures of life is an early-morning cappuccino in the company of a good newspaper. That was before Covid-19 came along. The pandemic and resulting disruption of newspaper deliveries and shuttering of cafes has…
- Categories: Development, SDGs, WORLDVIEWS
- Ivana Ramirez
- • February 12, 2021

The US returns to the Human Rights Council; atrocities documented in the Mali conflict; a woman declares her candidacy for UN secretary-general. You are reading This Week @UN, a summary of the most pressing issues facing the organization. The…
- Stéphanie Fillion
- • February 11, 2021

Arora Akanksha, a 34-year-old staff member who works as an audit coordinator for the United Nations Development Program, has announced her candidacy for the job of UN secretary-general, so far the only person to challenge António Guterres, the incumbent….
- Categories: General Assembly, Secretary-General, Security Council
- Alan Doss
- • February 9, 2021

GENEVA — In May 2016, Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary-general, received an unexpected request from a fellow Nobel peace laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s civilian leader and state counselor. She asked him to lead a…
- Categories: Myanmar, WORLDVIEWS
- Stephen Schlesinger
- • January 3, 2021

Brian Urquhart, who spent most of his adult life in service to the United Nations, died on Saturday, Jan. 2, at his home in Tyringham, Mass., in the Berkshires, where he retired after serving as one of the most notable…
- Categories: UN Diplomats
- Barbara Crossette
- • December 14, 2020

Ever since the day in 1946 when the first secretary-general of the United Nations, Trygve Lie of Norway, took office, big powers have meddled in how the job is done. Most often, the United States has been the most…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Human Rights, Secretary-General, US-UN Relations