Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein

• March 13, 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic anniversary; digitally recruiting women to run for the United Nations’ top job; International Women’s Day, a bit of a downer. You are reading This Week @UN, summarizing the most pressing issues facing the organization. The information is gathered from the UN spokesperson’s press briefings, PassBlue reporting and other sources. We encourage you …

Cities, Gender Violence, Migration, Myanmar, Secretary-General, Security Council, Syria, This Week @UN, US-UN Relations

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Kashmir May Be an Old Crisis at the UN, but the World Is Now Riveted

Barbara Crossette

• August 19, 2019

A familiar refrain often heard when the burgeoning crisis in Kashmir rises to the top of the news is that this is an old story from long ago; we have moved on. The United Nations is discovering, however, that there is less tolerance for indifference since India’s decrees on Aug. 5-6 to singlehandedly remake …

Asia, Secretary-General, Security Council

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NIKKI HALEY WATCH

Once Again, Haley Accuses Others for US Failure at Rights Council Reform

Barbara Crossette

• July 22, 2018

In the middle of last week, when the Trump administration was still unable to say how it “lost” more than 2,500 children torn from their asylum-seeking parents at the border with Mexico, Nikki Haley, the United States envoy to the United Nations, was telling a different story to a sympathetic group in Washington, D.C. …

General Assembly, Human Rights, Nikki Haley Watch

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WORLDVIEWS

The UN Secretary-General’s Human-Rights Crisis Can Be Solved

Bertrand Ramcharan

• June 26, 2018

There is a crisis in the United Nations human-rights system. Secretary-General António Guterres can lead the way out of it. Indeed, the world continues to look to the UN secretary-general to stand up for the principles of the organization. One of the highest responsibilities of the incumbent is to help steer a course toward …

General Assembly, Human Rights, Secretary-General, WORLDVIEWS

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With Trump’s Human-Rights Policies, Religious ‘Values’ Take Priority

Barbara Crossette

• June 7, 2018

For almost three centuries, through street protests, court battles and a civil war, the United States has sporadically but steadily advanced and expanded human-rights protections and commitments in domestic and foreign policies. Now Donald Trump and the most conservative, ideologically driven officials on his team want to turn back this record in fundamental ways, …

Gender Violence, Health and Population, Human Rights, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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NIKKI HALEY WATCH

In Year 2 of Trump Presidency, the US Is Still Eroding Both the UN and Women’s Rights

Barbara Crossette

• May 21, 2018

After a year of bombast and threats by Ambassador Nikki Haley and the ever-evolving Donald Trump administration, the tone appears to be turned down a few notches in the second year of the Trump presidency. But efforts to undermine the United Nations and what it stands for have not stopped, at least for now, …

Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, Middle East, Nikki Haley Watch, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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NIKKI HALEY WATCH

Reform Eludes the Human Rights Council as Bolton Returns to the Scene

Barbara Crossette

• April 1, 2018

The 2018 winter session of the United Nations Human Rights Council was marked more by what didn’t happen than what did. There was still no official announcement in Geneva from the Trump administration about whether the United States would leave the Council or even seek re-election in 2019, when its current term expires. There was …

Human Rights, Nikki Haley Watch, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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TAKE A LOOK

Tackling Sexual Violence in Humanitarian NGOs

Barbara Crossette

• December 31, 2017

Nearly three years ago, Megan Nobert, a humanitarian worker in South Sudan, was drugged and raped by an employee of a United Nations agency, according to her account, made public six months later. That was when Nobert decided to form the advocacy group Report the Abuse to encourage others to tell their stories and …

Gender Violence, Humanitarian Aid, Take a Look

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GEOPOLITICS

Is the US Going to Drop Out of the UN Human Rights Council?

Barbara Crossette

• December 17, 2017

Palestinian causes in the United Nations are gaining wider and more active support in the Arab and Islamic worlds in light of Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, in defiance of global opinion and decades of UN resolutions. The move sets the scene for reigniting intense anti-UN activity in United States Congress. …

Geopolitics, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Security Council, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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$5 Million Grant From Microsoft Will Help UN Track Human-Rights Abuses

Julie Vanderperre

• July 20, 2017

As political instability, conflicts and migration proliferate across the world, technology has become a potential solution for identifying and predicting human-rights violations, which play a major role instigating upheavals. Smartphones enable instant updates and eyewitness accounts of events happening around the globe, and the use of cloud computing and big-data analysis allows large amounts …

Human Rights

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NIKKI HALEY WATCH

In Geneva, Nikki Haley Dodges Questions of US Future in UN Rights Council

Barbara Crossette

• June 6, 2017

In a much-anticipated series of speeches in Geneva on June 6, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, would not say whether a decision had been made by the Trump administration about US membership in the UN Human Rights Council. But she warned that if the Council, widely criticized by conservative …

Human Rights, Nikki Haley Watch, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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NIKKI HALEY WATCH

Nikki Haley’s ‘Historic’ Debate on Human Rights Left a Small Impression

Dulcie Leimbach

• April 18, 2017

Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, presided over what she was determined to sell as “an historic meeting exclusively on human rights” in the UN Security Council. But her brief speech in the April 18 meeting fell far short of introducing innovations to confront violations of human rights or prevent …

Human Rights, Nikki Haley Watch, Peace and Security, Security Council, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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TAKE A LOOK

America’s Financial Support to the UN: What’s at Stake?

Barbara Crossette

• April 4, 2017

With White House proposals to slash United States assessments and donations to international organizations now in play in the writing of a federal budget for 2018 — as an April 28 deadline approaches — the extent of potential losses to the United Nations is coming into sharp focus. The US, for example, has immediately …

Take a Look, UN Peacekeeping, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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UN Human-Rights Chief Warns of a ‘Political Earthquake’ of Populism

Barbara Crossette

• February 17, 2017

In a bold excoriation of populist and nationalist movements now gripping many nations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights told an audience of foreign policy experts, human-rights advocates and students of diplomacy in Washington, D.C., this week that the drive toward “protectionism, unilateralism and the proclamations of national or religious purity” is …

Human Rights, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

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How’s He Doing? António Guterres’s First Month as UN Secretary-General

Dulcie Leimbach

• February 5, 2017

Thirty-two days in office as United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres spoke extensively to the media for the first time at UN headquarters, on Feb. 1. Indicative of the chaos gripping many parts of the world as a result of new White House actions, Guterres might be forgiven for waiting a month to address the …