No Room for LGBT Rights in the New UN Development Goals

• May 17, 2015

Before this year ends, the United Nations will have committed itself and its 193 member governments to a new 15-year development strategy to be hailed as a blueprint for ending poverty, expanding social justice and strengthening equality. Equality for whom is the question. Missing by deliberate design from the new plan, called the Sustainable …

Development, LGBT, SDGs

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Where’s Samantha Power? Her Rare Appearances Rankle the Press Corps at the UN

Dulcie Leimbach

• May 8, 2015

Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, has made herself scarce in answering direct, spontaneous questions from the press corps based at the UN, to the chagrin of many reporters. The press corps is international by nature and not affiliated with the UN but housed in UN headquarters, where reporters can …

Security Council, UN Diplomats, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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The World’s 10 Oldest Nations by Population and the Implications

Amy Wu

• April 22, 2015

Misao Okama celebrated her 117th birthday on March 5 surrounded by her family, which included great-grandchildren, and congratulatory government officials. This milestone made Okama the world’s oldest woman. She died on April 1. Based on the most recent population forecast and data from the United Nations, it comes as little surprise that the world’s oldest …

Asia, Health and Population, Women

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Prostitution: A Word That UN Women Does Not Want to Hear

Barbara Crossette

• March 31, 2015

On the eve of a speech Ruchira Gupta was to give on International Women’s Day in New York as the recipient of a Woman of Distinction award, she got a strange email. Gupta, who has collected numerous awards for her work against sex slavery in India — including an Emmy for her 1996 documentary, …

Gender Violence, Human Trafficking, Poverty, Women

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For Elephants in Zimbabwe, a Deeply Troubling Present and Future

Trishula Patel

• March 17, 2015

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Elephants across the African continent face poaching, loss of habitable land and food supplies and culling. When World Wildlife Day was marked this month, the United Nations General Assembly discussed wildlife crime across the globe, including the threat to elephants, which are declining in number throughout Africa. Here in Zimbabwe, they …

Africa, Climate Change

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Will Statisticians Get the Last Word on the UN’s New Development Goals?

Bill Orme

• March 9, 2015

There are three things you need to know about the negotiations over the United Nations’ next set of global development goals, which will be adopted by world leaders at the General Assembly this September and remain in effect for the next 15 years: Almost everybody agrees that the proposed 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) …