WASHINGTON, D.C. — Covid-19 poses major challenges for people and governments around the world and for the United Nations. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for a global cease-fire on March 23 in recognition of the pandemic’s potentially devastating effects on people in conflict-affected nations. Less noticed in the press coverage was the important point that …
As peacekeepers sweat and toil and risk their lives in some of the world’s most lethal settings — South Sudan, Mali, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo — it is incumbent on the United Nations and its 193 members to alleviate the suffering and deaths of troops as fatalities keep rising. In 2017, …
The South Sudan Council of Churches is an umbrella organization for seven Christian denominations — African Inland Church, Catholic, Episcopal, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Evangelical Presbyterian and Sudan Interior Church — working on peace and reconciliation in South Sudan and based in Juba, the capital. The country has been fighting a civil war for exactly four years. …
The intense civil conflict in South Sudan that broke out in December 2013 and has brought the world’s youngest nation to the edge of genocide has not subsided, with no solution in sight. Once more, the United Nations Security Council will meet to discuss the newest status report from the UN Secretariat, as President Salva …
As China has projected its economic and military power more widely not only in Asia but also in Africa and to some extent in Latin America, little notice has been paid by the general public to another arena of growing influence: United Nations peacekeeping. In coming weeks, the Chinese are expected to announce the formation …
The United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations tried to maintain calm in many regions in 2013, but none more so than in Africa. In December alone, it lost numerous peacekeepers in three missions on the continent. By year’s end, the department lost 102 peacekeepers, including those who died from accidents and illnesses, and 36 people …
Hervé Ladsous, a French diplomat who is the new under secretary-general for United Nations peacekeeping operations, said on Thursday that though he had “no predetermined grand vision” for the agency, he would focus on cutting back on the UN’s presence in Haiti; its work in Sudan and South Sudan; and the death this week of …
