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Kelly Knight Craft, shown here as the American ambassador to Canada, is Trump’s nominee for the top envoy role at the United Nations. Her Senate confirmation hearing, held June 19, 2019, for the UN ambassadorship elicited many questions from senators regarding her posture on climate change. She...
Farmers selling conservation agriculture goods, including onions, in Meru County, Kenya. Conservation agriculture projects, supported partly by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, strive to maximize crop production while minimizing ecological disturbances. ©FAO/LUIS TATO
The...
The property rights of Catherine, a widow, have been threatened with violence in Magu, Tanzania. For widows across the globe, their losses can be uncountable, including their human rights. BEN SMALL/HELPAGE INTERNATIONAL
For many women around the world, the death of a spouse is magnified...
Margaret Busby, editor of a new anthology, “New Daughters of Africa,” includes writers across the world from more than three dozen nations, many based in Africa or the Caribbean. The book builds on a 1992 compendium.
Margaret Busby is a pioneer in the literary world. In 1967, she became...
Karen Pierce, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, mixes a dashing clothing style with a pronounced, articulate voice on her country’s policies as the only female diplomat among the permanent-five members, Britain, China, France, Russia and America, on the Security Council. UN WEBTV
...Women in Uruguay preparing to participate in an International Women’s Day march, 2019. New global plans are underway to mark the 25th anniversary of the Beijing conference advancing women’s rights in 2020, including events to be held in Mexico, France and New York. The efforts will not be easy....
Women from North Darfur performing a traditional dance during a celebration organized by the UN mission there. The author of this essay, an international rights lawyer, argues that Omar al-Bashir, the now-ousted president of Sudan, should be transferred to the International Criminal Court for...
The US State Department has created a new commission to advise Secretary of State Pompeo, above, on redefining policies aligned with “natural law and natural rights.” For human-rights advocates, the language suggests ominous religious and other overtones. RON PRZYSUCHA/STATE DEPARTMENT
In...
Mansour Al-Otaibi, Kuwait’s ambassador to the UN, in his office in New York. He is leading the monthly rotating Security Council presidency in June for his country’s last time in this role for what could be decades. STÉPHANIE FILLION
Geopolitically, Kuwait’s plate is nearly full for its...
Michael Sharp and Zaida Catalán in a UN conference room in New York, date unknown. The two UN experts were murdered in 2017 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and their deaths have never been fully solved. Zobel Behalal, nameplate above, was also a member of the UN experts group working in...
Critical needs arrive for the 45,000 or so Syrian refugees stuck in Rukban camp, near the Jordan border, with most residents women and children. A new bill from the US House of Representatives may overturn Trump-Pence policies that deny women and girls in poor nations and conflict zones access...
Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a Costa Rican and current UN independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity. The expert’s role was loudly protested by countries in the Middle East-North Africa region and elsewhere when it was established in 2016. Yet some nations in that area are now...
At the Pho 5, which opened in February and is on Third Avenue near 39th Street, the nouvelle Vietnamese food features not only traditional vermicelli but also tacos piled high with goodies. IRWIN ARIEFF
Sure, you could check out The Pho 5 for its oversized bowls of beefy pho, its...
Vice President Pence suddenly showed up at the UN on April 10, 2019, to demand that the Security Council strip the current Venezuelan ambassador’s UN credentials. That has not happened. The US mission to the UN lacks a permanent representative amid an outflow of a range of personnel. Some UN...
Simon Handy, who specializes in African politics and conflict, worked for the UN in the Central African Republic, during its most violent upheaval. The experience still haunts him. SOUTHERN AFRICAN LIAISON OFFICE
Simon Handy, a specialist in African politics and conflict, is a veteran of...
President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana at his country’s 62nd Independence Day parade, in Tamale, March 7, 2019. He has announced that French should be an official language of his country, which is surrounded by many Francophone nations. REPUBLIC OF GHANA
Ghana, one of the few English-speaking...
On the last day of the annual UN women’s conference in March, joy was mixed with relief by delegates after grueling negotiations over a summary document. The facilitator for the negotiations, Koki Muli Grignon, a Kenyan diplomat, received bullying text messages during the process. The US mission...
Wazhma Frogh, an award-winning advocate for Afghan women and girls, said in a recent interview about women’s participation in the current peace talks for her country: It’s a litmus test for the world, what’s going on in Afghanistan. LARA MCKINLEY
Wazhma Frogh is a lifetime campaigner for...
Mukhisa Kituyi, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, at an e-commerce session on Africa, organized with the Alibaba Business School, April 1, 2019. HENRIQUE PACINI/UNCTAD
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, riven internally by disputes over...
Sir Brian Urquhart, who spent his much of his adult life in service to the UN, speaking at the General Assembly’s commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, Jan. 24, 2005. He turned 100 years old on Feb. 28, 2019. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
Sir...
Drought results in Mauritania, the Sahel region of West Africa, 2012. More evidence is showing that extreme weather and slower forms of climate change can produce more risks of conflict and other violence, a fact clear in such parts of the world as the Sahel. CREATIVE COMMONS
There is...
Demonstrators in Berlin protesting the war in Syria. A new attribution team at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is ready to work on determining who is to blame for the 2018 chemical attacks in Syria, despite angry objections by Russia. CREATIVE COMMONS
THE HAGUE —...
A new Security Council resolution recognizes for the first time that men and boys are victims of sexual violence in conflicts, reflecting more attention to this problem in addition to the work being done for female victims. Here, a scene from Aleppo, Syria. CREATIVE COMMONS
The United...
Dian Triansyah Djani, Indonesia’s ambassador to the UN, wearing a traditional batik shirt from his country. He said the main desire of his country as an elected member of the UN Security Council is simple: to save as many lives as possible while trying to make peacekeeping as highly efficient as...
A possible peace deal in the pipeline as the Dinkas and Murles in Jonglei, South Sudan, agree to end age-old hostilities, March 28, 2019. The US is withholding its agreed-on share of UN peacekeeping dues that go to such missions as the one in South Sudan. UNMISS/UN PHOTO
The Trump...
A wave of new or persistent accusations of harassment and corruption in some UN system agencies and programs reflects poor management and more politicization of high-level appointments demanded by UN member nations. Here, the UN headquarters.
A sea of new or lingering allegations of...
Amal Clooney, the British human-rights lawyer, told the Security Council that now is its “Nuremberg moment” to push for prosecuting cases of sexual violence in conflict. Nadia Murad, right, a Yazidi, had been held by ISIS in Iraq. In 2018, Murad won the Nobel Peace Prize with Dr. Denis Mukwege,...
A resident returned to his home in the Mopti region of Mali after attacks in February 2019 in the Bankass Circle area, where at least 18 people died by shooting and burning. Deadly violence is increasing in central Mali, targeting civilians, Malian soldiers and peacekeepers with no resolution in...
In a refugee camp in South Sudan, people escape the fighting in the country’s civil war, including rampant rape by militias and national armed forces. Members of the UN Security Council are drafting a resolution to strengthen such victims’ rights, but the United States is refusing language on...
In a refugee camp in South Sudan, people escape the fighting in the country’s civil war, including rampant rape by militias and national armed forces. Members of the UN Security Council are drafting a resolution to strengthen victims’ rights, but the United States is resisting language on sexual...
President Trump with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, May 2017. From the start of his presidency, Trump’s Middle East policies have amounted to a “bromance” with the Israeli leader, the author writes, but where is the mysterious peace plan for Israel and Palestine, and...
A new advocacy campaign started by Madre, an American nonprofit group, aims to introduce women in the developing world to lawmakers in Washington to explain how US foreign policy affects women at the receiving end. Life in Burkina Faso, above, can entail battling bad air, terrorist threats and...
Carlos Holmes Trujillo, left, Colombia’s foreign affairs minister, with Jonathan R. Cohen, center, deputy ambassador of the US to the UN, and Karel van Oosterom, Netherlands’ ambassador to the UN, in the Security Council, Oct. 10, 2018. Cohen has been nominated by Trump as ambassador to Egypt,...
In Aleppo, another victim in the Syrian war, led by President Bashar al-Assad against his own people since March 2011. The UN Security Council recently passed a resolution that ensures that countries’ counterterrorism measures comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law,...
Christoph Heusgen, Germany’s ambassador to the UN and rotating president of the Security Council for April, introduced a German-made hourglass in Council meetings to keep speeches to five minutes each. The Russian ambassador asked in one instance that the timer be laid flat when he spoke. ...
In 2015, only three African nations made the top 10 globally in numbers of Christians in the population: Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia, about 216 million Christians total. The continent is projected to hit 727 million Christians by 2060, with Nigeria leading. Here,...
The grave of Robert Bowie, the author’s paternal grandfather and a doctor who lived in Nagasaki, above, and died in 1911. The gravesite survived the American atomic bombing of the city, Aug. 9, 1945. BRIAN BURKE-GAFFNEY
NAGASAKI, Japan — The live fish of the day, taken from a tank that...
India is swept up in a growing “maternalization” trend: the federal government is offering cash-transfer programs to pregnant women to improve maternal health, sidelining other safety-net programs for women. ADAM JONES/CREATIVE COMMONS
Social policy in developing countries provides...
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with President Trump at lunch with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Hanoi, Feb. 27, 2019. Pompeo and Trump marked international women’s month in March by actively eroding the reproductive health rights of women globally. RON PRZYSUCHA/STATE...
City life in Bangkok, above. A new World Bank report found that work and legal protections are missing in rich and poor countries alike, including the US. Only six nations, all in Europe, scored perfectly in providing women equal legal standing as men across their working lives. UN WOMEN
...Hasmik Egian, center, director of the Security Council Affairs Division of the UN, receiving requests from diplomats who want to speak at the emergency Council session on Venezuela, Jan. 26, 2019. MANUEL ELIAS/UN PHOTO
Jockeying for a two-year seat on the United Nations Security Council...
Abigail Disney, the filmmaker, in 2009. In an interview about women peacemakers and the current debut of her second documentary series of “Women, War & Peace,” she said: “I’m very consciously trying to interrupt the sleepy narrative of war in the American cultural landscape.” EIRIK SOLHEIM...
Koki Muli Grignon, a Kenyan diplomat, center, who managed the negotiations on the final document summarizing the annual UN meeting on women’s rights, told delegates that she had been sent nearly 1,000 text messages attacking her because of her work leading the debate. LAURA E. KIRKPATRICK
...Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011 in Washington. As president, he has let the US ambassadorship to the UN, the country’s second-most important foreign policy role, sit empty for months. GAGE SKIDMORE/CREATIVE COMMONS
More than six months ago, the...
A first-time voter with her ID card at a polling booth during national elections in 2014, in Sikkim. This year’s national election in India spans 39 days across April and May. A new book reveals that 21 million women are not registered to vote, reflecting social resistance to women doing so....
Ana Menéndez, a former Spanish diplomat, leads the UN’s internal gender parity strategy and oversees the institution’s policymaking. In an interview with PassBlue, she said that the UN stands for certain “values,” and an integral part of those beliefs is gender equality. Here, she attends a UN...
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are meant to improve the lives of everyone universally, but the system tracking their progress is showing flaws resulting from politics and a heavy reliance on numbers. Women offering food at Cuba’s Independence Day celebration, Caimito, 2015. JOE PENNEY...
In August, 2017, more than half a million Rohingya refugees flooded across the border from Burma to Bangladesh to escape violence in Rakhine State, including pregnant women and children. The United States gave about $28 million in food and other goods, but the government’s global gag rule banned...
Kelly Knight Craft, the US envoy to Canada, has been nominated by President Trump to be the next US representative to the UN. Here, she celebrates the Fourth of July in Ottawa with her husband, Joseph Craft III, a billionaire coal investor. The couple’s coal wealth could present a conflict of...
Recently, Caribbean leaders met in the French islands of Guadeloupe to introduce a regional project, Carib-Coast, to deal cooperatively with repeated storm crises and rising sea levels. Here, a hiking path to the Soufrière volcano, Saint-Claude, Guadeloupe. CREATIVE COMMONS
GOSIER,...
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