UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations

Is the US Ready for a Feminist Foreign Policy? Absolutely, Advocates Say

May 26, 2020

The world of diplomacy has toyed with the concept of feminist foreign policies for years, raising some support and not a few snickers from dissenters. A new campaign led by women with strong professional qualifications and global experience in more than 50 organizations plans to change that mind-set in the United States. On May …

Security Council, US Foreign Relations, Women

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COVID-19

Quarantined and Stalked by Covid-19, UN Field Staff Live With Fear and Anxiety

May 11, 2020

by Barbara Crossette

Far from United Nations headquarters in New York and its offices in other cities around the world, many thousands of UN staff members are adjusting to new, more disturbing and dangerous realities in the era of Covid-19. Daily life is taking a psychological toll in both humanitarian and peacekeeping operations, prompting more focus on …

Africa, Covid-19

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COVID-19

E-Learning Is Nothing New for UN Peacekeepers, but Demand Is Up

May 5, 2020

by Susan Manuel

Covid-19 has forced educators from preschools to universities to create digital classrooms overnight. But at least one global community has been using e-learning for more than a decade. Tens of thousands of United Nations peacekeepers from Chile to Bangladesh to South Africa have long been using online courses to prepare for deployment to the …

Covid-19, UN Peacekeeping

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TOPIC: WOMEN

UN Chief Condemns Male Privilege as Many Nations Defy Such Bashing

March 4, 2020

by Barbara Crossette

With International Women’s Day, March 8, on the horizon, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres blasted the intractable power of patriarchy, the cause of overwhelming gender injustice and an abuse of historical proportions, in his view. “Just as slavery and colonialism were a stain on previous centuries, women’s inequality should shame us all in the …

Gender-Based Violence, Secretary-General, Women

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Reading the US Presidential Tea Leaves: Do the Candidates Even Care About the UN?

January 29, 2020

by Jeffrey Laurenti

President Trump was at the United Nations last fall telling world leaders that “the future does not belong to globalists” when Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the United States House of Representatives would launch an inquiry into his possible impeachment. It was the same General Assembly whose derisive laughter at Trump’s boast a year before …

US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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TOPIC: WOMEN

In Haiti, a Result of Peacekeepers Who Abuse Their Power: ‘Petits Minustahs’

January 16, 2020

by Susan A. Bartels

In Haiti, a young woman I’ll call Marie became involved with a United Nations peacekeeper from Brazil when she was 14 years old. She became pregnant. He was sent back to Brazil; she was ostracized by her family. In 2017, when our research team met with Marie, she said that she and her son, …

UN Peacekeeping, Women

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Politics and Understaffing Delay US Funding to the Main UN Budgets

December 3, 2019

by Maurizio Guerrero

Politics and understaffing are the main reasons the United States has still not paid its outstanding dues to the general budget of the United Nations, after much news coverage of the problem in early October. The UN is experiencing an unprecedented financial crisis that threatens its peacekeeping operations globally and severely hampers its work …

UN Peacekeeping, US-UN Relations

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WORLDVIEWS

Big Powers at the UN Are Hanging Western Sahara Out to Dry

November 5, 2019

by Fatma Medhi

A stunning policy reversal by the United States regarding Western Sahara occurred last week, but it didn’t make many headlines. What happened? When the United Nations Security Council adopted a new resolution on Western Sahara, renewing the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission —Minurso — there for another 12 months, the action meant America’s …

Africa, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS

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GEOPOLITICS

The Moment to End Turkey’s Other War, in Cyprus, Is Fading Fast

October 24, 2019

by Stéphanie Fillion

Anywhere from the capital of Nicosia, day and night, Greek Cypriots can see a giant flag painted into the mountains in the north, in a separate region that calls itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. It is an area that is recognized only by Turkey and isolated internationally. From the Greek side of …

Geopolitics, Secretary-General, Syria

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SECURITY COUNCIL PRESIDENCY

Africa Will No Longer Be Sidelined: South Africa’s Goal on the UN Security Council

October 9, 2019

by Stéphanie Fillion

Jerry Matthews Matjila, South Africa’s point man at the United Nations, took the hot seat on the Security Council as its president for October with busy days now in sight. “There are 40 meetings already planned before we start the month,” he told the press, noting the month covers five weeks. “It’s going to …

Africa, Peace and Security, Security Council Presidency

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Kashmiri Muslims in Danger as Hindu Politicians Cancel Their Rights

August 9, 2019

by Barbara Crossette

It has always been relatively easy for Indian governments from both the political left and right to keep Kashmir from the eyes of the world. At no time has this been more obvious than now. Landlocked, under the guns of half a million Indian troops and paramilitaries, cut off sporadically from all modern communications …

Asia, Secretary-General, Security Council

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WORLDVIEWS

Dear UN Security Council: Remember to Protect the Children

July 30, 2019

by Dragica Mikavica

Every time the budget committee of the United Nations meets, as it did in June, child-protection advocates enter a familiar existential crisis: will the United States and China cut UN budgets specifically allocated to specialists on child protection in peacekeeping missions? I am often asked by people in the UN why a child-rights advocate …

Child Soldiers, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS

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A Survey on Mali for Malians: What They Want for Their Country

June 24, 2019

by Dulcie Leimbach

Since 2012, a German political think tank has surveyed Malians regularly on their country’s current affairs across a legion of crises. These include the 2013 jihadist incursion in the nation, the French-led militarization to oust the jihadists, the post-conflict stabilization work done by the United Nations and a new cycle of intercommunal violence erupting …

Africa, Security Council, UN Peacekeeping, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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How Uruguayan Peacekeepers Found the Two Dead UN Experts in Congo in 2017

May 29, 2019

by Dulcie Leimbach

Two years have passed since the shooting murders of Michael Sharp and Zaida Catalán, independent experts working for the United Nations Security Council in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in March 2017. Sharp, a 34-year-old American, and Catalán, a 36-year-old Swedish-Chilean, had gone on a mission, without UN escorts, to find information about …

Africa, Security Council, UN Peacekeeping

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Serving the UN Where Violence Never Ends: One Person’s Story

May 21, 2019

by Barbara Crossette

Simon Handy, a specialist in African politics and conflict, is a veteran of a hazardous and tormented mission in the Central African Republic that left him with an enduring cause that still haunts him. He argues that when a United Nations mission changes or is abandoned, as was the case for him, staff members can …