UN special rapporteurs
- Damilola Banjo
- • November 16, 2022

LAGOS — The United Nations is ignoring repeated calls for help in resolving a resource war between largely Christian farmers and mainly Muslim herders in Kaduna, a state in northwest Nigeria. The conflict has been smoldering since 2011 and…
- Categories: Africa, Climate Change, Human Rights
- Peter Splinter
- • October 5, 2021

GENEVA — It is time for the United Nations Human Rights Council to take climate change much more seriously than it has been and to treat the issue with the urgency, deliberation and action that it demands. The Council…
- Categories: Climate Change, Human Rights, WORLDVIEWS
- Lucas Dias Rodrigues dos Santos
- • August 5, 2021

GENEVA — The United States is campaigning for election to the Human Rights Council in October for the 2022-24 term, starting a new chapter in its volatile relationship with the Geneva-based body. Its current re-engagement, including more acceptance of…
- Categories: Human Rights, US-UN Relations
- Ivana Ramirez
- • July 24, 2021

A US delegation to Haiti returns early; potential risks for the $87 billion UN pension fund; an ex-Guantánamo detainee may face torture in Russia. You are reading This Week @UN, summarizing the most pressing issues facing the organization. The information…
- Categories: Africa, Asia, Human Rights, SDGs, Secretary-General, This Week @UN, US-UN Relations
- Clair MacDougall
- • July 20, 2021

Yusuf Mingazov met his father, Ravil, for the first time through a videocall between a Red Cross office in Nottingham, Britain, and the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, where he had been imprisoned for more than 14 years….
- Categories: Human Rights, Terrorism, US-UN Relations
- Ivana Ramirez
- • July 16, 2021

Receding glaciers in Iceland; the UN’s use of public-relations firms; South Sudan’s promising women’s soccer league; Lebanon’s “reversal.” You are reading This Week @UN, summarizing the most pressing issues facing the organization. The information is gathered from UN press briefings,…
- Categories: Climate Change, Gender Violence, Secretary-General, Security Council, This Week @UN
- Ivana Ramirez
- • July 9, 2021

Crucial aid into Syria continues; will a feminist head UN Women?; the good and bad of Security Council Arria meetings; Haiti on the edge. You are reading This Week @UN, summarizing the most pressing issues facing the organization. The…
- Categories: Africa, Asia, Human Rights, Secretary-General, Security Council, This Week @UN, US-UN Relations
- Barbara Crossette
- • August 19, 2020

To keep tabs on the lives and rights of people across the world, the United Nations Human Rights Council has the help of 44 independent monitors supposedly chosen for their expertise on a range of themes, from harsh government…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Human Trafficking, Women
- Dulcie Leimbach
- • July 24, 2018

Richard Falk is a well-known American academic and writer who from 2008 until 2014 was the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine since 1967, a post that invariably invites controversy. For Falk, who has never been…
- Bertrand Ramcharan
- • January 7, 2018

The United Nations Charter requires each and every member state to discharge its obligations by faithfully carrying out norms of legally binding international human-rights law. These may be norms of international customary law, those contained in treaties or those…
- Categories: Human Rights, WORLDVIEWS
- A. Edward Elmendorf
- • July 3, 2016

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United Nations Human Rights Council, the highest organ exclusively responsible for human rights in the world body, is now 10 years old. It recently received concentrated attention here in the United States capital. Such concerted…
- Categories: WORLDVIEWS
- Rosa Freedman
- • April 20, 2015

In September 2014, four United Nations human-rights experts wrote to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon alleging that the UN had violated human rights through the cholera epidemic in Haiti, which broke out in October 2010. This is the first time that…
- Categories: WORLDVIEWS
- Christof Heyns and Juan Mendez
- • November 20, 2012

Mores in societies change over the years. While slavery, torture and public executions were once a global phenomenon, and foot binding and deadly duels were deeply entrenched aspects of regional cultures, they are no longer considered acceptable by the…
- Categories: Human Rights, WORLDVIEWS
- A. Edward Elmendorf
- • September 14, 2012

The visibility of human-rights violations by the Syrian government amid the current turmoil owes much to the United Nations, particularly to its Independent International Commission of Inquiry, led by Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, a Brazilian lawyer, public official and professor. …
- Categories: BOOKS