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- Beyond Guantanamo: China's Uyghur Muslim Minority 9:21am Jun 25|1 Comment
- When success is softball... 8:48am Jun 25
- Climate Week NYC 8:40am Jun 25
Ed Note: Last week, The Lancet published an editorial and two studies about the current state of global health initiatives for the developing world. The following is a response to The Lancet from Andrea Gay, Exeucitve Director of Children's Health at the United Nations Foundation and Dr...
In an article about the increasing diplomatic pressure and military build-up in the melting Arctic Circle, this is the extent of the response that Reuters got from a top U.S. official: "We will seek cooperative strategies," U.S...
A health problem you might not expect to find in Uganda: obesity. The chairman of the (Nobel Prize-winning) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on why halting global warming is an environmental imperative -- and how it can bring other benefits as well. Um, CO2 not a pollutant...
...comes from the mouth of Nick Burns, who was once effectively paid by the U.S...
Listen to former UN Ambassador, former Director of National Intelligence, former Ambassador to Iraq and former Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte explain why the United State's decision to join the Human Rights Council. As an added bonus, Negroponte also extols the virtues of UN...
Excuse me if I find some irony in Ethiopia declining the Somali government's request to send troops, when all indicators point to the likelihood that Ethiopia already sent some of its troops "reconnaissance missions" over the border weeks ago...
The International Criminal Court yesterday formally ordered that Jean Pierre Bemba, a former Congolese vice president and militia leader, stand trial on charges that he commanded his militia in a campaign of rape, murder and pillage in the Central African Republic...
The UN announced yesterday that its top diplomat in Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, will be leaving his post to become the deputy executive director of the World Food Program. Congratulations are in order for Mr...
Reports from the Hill suggest that the House and Senate conference committee have agreed on language for the final FY09 Emergency Supplemental, replete with language for the full repayment of UN arrears...
On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton swore in Melanne Verveer, a longtime friend and former chief of staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton, to be Ambassador at Large for Global Women's Issues. I've known people who have worked with Verveer and they have nothing but great things to say...
NBC's Richard Engel's gives a good, up-to-date (as of 8 am EST), briefing on the situation in Iran...
Having trouble putting together the two ideas of "cap" and "trade"...
Wednesday night, the Bosnian television program "60 Minutes" broadcast videos of former Serb general Ratko Mladic, who has been indicted to join his former political leader, Radovan Karadzic, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the forme Yugoslavia in The Hague...
Today's the big day, and turnout seems to be high (which experts have emphasized would likely be a boon to Ahmadinejad's opponent, Mir Hossein Moussavi):
Responding to a Marty Peretz post mocking the UN for General Assembly elections won by some of his favorite countries, this commenter sounds a welcome note of reality to Peretz's sarcastic jibes: All well and good, but do you imagine that Ambassador Bolton would have prevented the elections of...
From the stark-raving mad department...John Bolton targets his Israel's missiles on Iran again...
That's the free number that Afghans can call for information about their upcoming elections. Set up by the UN team in the country, the number has become one of the most popular in Afghanistan: The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said today that some 25,000 Afghans call the...
The small archipelago nation, Palau, is stepping up to take 17 ethnic chinese Uighurs from prison in Guantanamo. In fact, the United States Supreme Court ordered these detainees released months ago, but until now the Obama administration could not find a country willing to receive them...
A day after representatives from more than 35 countries and international organizations met in Rome to discuss piracy off the coast of the Somalia, the UN today reports the astonishing figure that over 100,000 Somalis have been displaced in the last month. Even by the standards of Somalia's...
I love me a good Yvo de Boer profile as much as the next guy, and I applaud any effort to make the complexity of the UN climate negotiations bite-sized, but the first line of this AFP article is ridiculous, "Yvo de Boer, it could be argued, holds the fate of the planet in his hands." Clearly I...
Good news for acolytes of renewable energy (like us): Green energy overtook fossil fuels in attracting investment for power generation for the first time last year, according to figures released today by the United Nations...
In his speech yesterday, Obama referenced Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, who is the first and only Muslim member of Congress. Ellison was elected in 2006. As is standard procedure, Members of Congress often choose to take a symbolic oath of office by placing their hand on a bible. Well,...
This one I get: The World Health Organization says a vaccine which can prevent a diarrhoea and vomiting virus should be given to all children as a routine vaccination...
In the simmering controversy over U.S.-caused civilian deaths in Afghanistan, Washington has been sending decidedly mixed signals. It has acknowledged that civilian protection must become the top priority for U.S...
Esteemed foreign policy commentators like Dan Drezner, Stephen Walt, Fred Kaplan, and Michael Tomasky have already plied their film knowledge in listing the top international relations movies. I'll try to pick up what Matt started earlier today and start an internet meme about the cartoons with...
As a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Ralph Fiennes -- who takes a turn at playing evil as He Who Must Not Be Named in the Harry Potter films -- has focused on the decidedly UN-evil cause of calling attention to the plight of child soldiers...
Last night the United States Congress voted 396 to 1 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square disaster. The lone dissenter? That would be Ron Paul, the isolationist congressman and former presidential candidate from Texas. Me...
Contrary to popular perception, the International Criminal Court does not have universal jurisdiction over war crimes. Rather, it operates under a unique legal principal called "complementarity" which stipulates that the ICC will only investigate crimes if national courts are unable or unwilling...
I'm sympathetic to the argument that human rights lawyers Geoffrey Nice and Pedro Nikken make in this Washington Post op-ed: that interest in Burma should go beyond the legitimate calls for Aung San Suu Kyi's freedom; that grave human rights abuses, probably amounting to war crimes and crimes...
You should be following the Tech4dev on twitter, because, if you were, you would have gotten this shocking statistic quicker: 1.6B ppl live "off the grid"; 80% of them on $1-$2/day. Yet in Kenya, these homes spend $200/yr on alt energy - fuel, etc...
Just a heads up that I'll be camped out at the Humanitarian Tech Challenge today and tomorrow, sending back reports. HTC, a partnership between the IEEE and the UN Foundation & Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership, seeks to define and develop sustainable solutions to humanitarian challenges...
UNICEF TV has this report on the agency's effort to cope with the rapidly unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Pakistan.
Ken Banks, the brilliant creator of FrontlineSMS, is now delivering a Lawrence-Lessig-style presentation at the Humanitarian Tech Challenge. It's all interesting and worth comment, but right now he's talking about a friend of his who took "a laptop and 100 used cell phones" to St...
Yesterday I wrote that a sad fact about life is that when things get tough, it's often those who can least afford more hardship who bear the brunt. I was pointing to this story about how the global economic crisis was exacerbating human rights abuses...
Today is International Day of UN Peacekeepers, which is a day that we honor the over 100,000 blue helmets from 118 countries who serve in 16 conflict zones across the globe. As a general rule, peacekeepers go where the no single country is willing to send their troops and are overwhelmingly drawn...
The Guardian smartly editorializes about the need to fund the World Food Program...
Come September, we may see Nicolas Sarkozy throw some fries on his sammy and Angela Merkel crack open an Iron City Light. The White House announced today that Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania will host the next G-20 Summit...
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the rights of the victims of detainee abuse should be taken into account in the debate over releasing additional Abu Ghraib photos...
Such as, say, the bird flu: Scientists have used bird flu virus samples from Egypt to develop a new basis for a vaccine against the toxic H5N1 strain that continues to circulate, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday...
To the spat over the wording of a UN report on security in Abkhazia, Georgia has added the charge of blackmail. "It is very unfortunate (and) alarming that the (U.N.) Secretariat submitted to the Russian blackmail," Georgia's U.N. Ambassador, Alexander Lomaia told, Reuters. This is getting silly...
Despite the urging of top UN Human Rights Official Navi Pillay, member states of the Human Rights Council could not agree to authorize a commission of inquiry into human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. The non-western, developing world bloc won the day...
A more obvious one, but still: The United Nations predicted Wednesday that the global economy will shrink 2.6 percent this year as a result of the world financial crisis - a considerably deeper downturn than the 0.5 percent contraction forecast in January...
Max Bergmann relays the possibility of the United States engaging in "soccer diplomacy" by scheduling a match with Iran in October or November. Improving relations with Iran would be a plus, but my money is on the Americans taking the game...
As Peter notes, the Human Rights Council is meeting to discuss the situation in Sri Lanka. At the outset of the meeting yesterday, the top UN Human Rights official Navi Pillay called for an independent international investigation into alleged human rights abuses committed by both sides...
Michael Keating at World Politics Review points to a tense political situation that the world doesn't seem to be paying much attention to -- and explains why we should be: [A]nti-proliferationists can only be chilled by the prospect of one of the world's major producers, Niger, plunging into a...
NYT: North Korea announced on Monday that it had successfully conducted its second nuclear test, defying international warnings and dramatically raising the stakes in a global effort to persuade the recalcitrant Communist state to give up its weapons program. ... Russia and Japan said the U.N...
Fresh from the US-UN Mission: Ambassador Rice: Good evening. We had a very productive and efficient meeting of the Security Council and consultations. As Ambassador Churkin said, the Council was unanimous in its strong condemnation in opposition to the nuclear test by North Korea...
From the UN News Center: "The Secretary-General is deeply concerned that this act will negatively affect regional peace and stability as well as the global nuclear non-proliferation regime," his spokesperson said in a statement. Mr...
Cross-posted at Huffington Post The establishment approach to counter-terrorism is based on an implicit assumption that there is a fundamental difference between the death and destruction caused by terrorist attacks and that caused by crime, hunger, disease and other such threats...
The UN Human Rights Council is set to hold a special session on Sri Lanka next Monday...
It's called the Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, and it was adopted 12 years ago today (via IntLawGrrls' excellent "On this day in..." feature)...
Meet the UN's next Goodwill Ambassador: hip-hop legend Russell Simmons. His role is to promote the Permanent Memorial for the victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. And he gets a new hat
Madam Secretary passes on a text message-based appeal made by Secretary Clinton yesterday to help raise emergency humanitarian relief funds for displaced persons in Pakistan's embattled Swat Valley: text "swat" to 20222 to provide a $5 donation to the UN refugee agency's life-saving work in the...
Ban Ki Moon will visit Sri Lanka later this week and the Secretary General had this to say in advance of the trip...
Forget the "prophet of doom." Gideon Rachman suggests that a short story about goat prices in Somalia could have been the best predictor of the economic meltdown...
I don't want to be seen as reflexively comparing everything to Rwanda, but Sri Lanka's situation bears some similarities as well: an extremist (and terrorist) group of violent separatists, squashed by an aggressive military offensive, creating a dangerous glut of displaced persons and the need to...
The Pakistani military operation in the Taliban stronghold of the mountainous Swat Valley is creating massive displacement that is destabilizing and immensely confusing, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees...
Reports are emerging that Ethiopian troops have incurred (again) on Ethiopian territory...
As it happens, I am in Israel this week. And in Israel, all eyes are on Washington, D.C...
Well, not for the war crimes he has been indicted for committing during a particularly ravaging attack on an AU-protected camp, but for agreeing to show up at The Hague for trial. This sets a positive precedent for others in Sudan indicted by the ICC, such as, um, that president guy...
First I read this: The physical safety of women in a given country is a better predictor of its peacefulness than wealth, level of Islamic influence, or even strength of democracy...
Now with awesome lead-in music!
Congress has inserted a provision into the State Department authorization budget that would require the State Department to confer the same benefits to same-sex partners as it does to married couples. Congressman Howard Berman, Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, included the...
* Smart Guardian editorial on why Burma needs aid, not sanctions. * A video recorded by slain Guatemalan attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg accuses the Guatemalan president of having a hand in his murder. The U.N. International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala will take up the case...
The final round of the multi-stage Indian elections conclude today. Early returns show a weak coalition lead by the Congress Party to be the most likely outcome...
Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, posted an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune on America's election to the Human Rights Council. In it, she calls for the United States to do more to investigate Bush-era detainee abuses: "The U.S...
Human Rights Watch released a new report on the legacy of the Tiananmen Square Massacre to political life in China today. HRW finds that there is ongoing official harassment of those who participated in the demonstration and crack downs on people who want a public reckoning of what happened...
Russia might be lukewarm on the ICC, but, according to Russia Today, it is more open to the idea of a pirate court, as its Prosecutor General's office is pushing for the creation of a UN special tribunal to try Somali pirates...
This is perhaps telling. Since the United States made its intention to run for a seat on the Human Rights Council known, about a month and a half ago, skeptics have wondered whether it could gain enough votes in the supposed "dictators' club" of the General Assembly. These murmurings persisted...
As I was cleaning out my feeds this morning, I stumbled across this brilliant article on Black Carbon, part of a series on "stopgap measures that could limit global warming." Black Carbon, aka "soot," produced by primitive cooking stoves in the developing world, accounts for up to 20 percent of...
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