Richard Falk : Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
Israel's airstrikes on Gaza are severe and massive violations of international law--and nations that have supplied weapons and supported Israel's siege of Gaza are complicit in the crimes.
Barbara Crossette : Human Rights
Which idea of human rights will prevail: Western notions of freedom from fear or poorer nations' insistence on freedom from want?
Barbara Crossette
As Martti Ahtisaari receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo today, it's clear that the hard work of peacemaking does not guarantee universal acclaim.
Barbara Crossette : Thailand
Its airports shut, Thailand is now ungovernable, as an educated elite attempts to overthrow the populist government it couldn't defeat at the ballot box.
Barbara Crossette : Human Rights
Quiet relief, an undercurrent of caution and hope for a new approach to human rights, the environment and the problems of the poor.
Barbara Crossette : Gender & Sexuality
As the UN meets today to assess its plan to heal a suffering world, the billions of women who still lack fundamental rights--especially reproductive rights- must be heard.
Barbara Crossette : Human Rights
Despite the Bush Administration's scramble to scuttle her nomination because she is--gasp!--a feminist, a South African judge is named high commissioner for human rights.
Barbara Crossette : Human Rights
Pressured by the Bush Administration, the United Nations issues a ringing declaration and solicits pledges that decry rape as a weapon of war. How about actually doing something?
Slavenka Drakulic : Human Rights
The UN resolution designating rape as a weapon of war is historic, but provides no legal remedy for wartime victims of sexual violence.
Linda Mamoun : Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
One of the world's most prominent critics of US interventionism talks about his new post as UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories.
Iran's leading dissident implores UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to reprimand the Iranian government for its human rights abuses and provide moral support for the suffering Iranian people.
Two books about Kofi Annan illuminate the controlling relationship between the US and the United Nations.
Zalmay Khalilzad promises be a more effective US ambassador to the UN, but is that a good thing?
Although Kofi Annan's tenure was shadowed by political catfights, he leaves the United Nations as one of its most successful secretary generals.
Ian Williams : US Foreign Policy
Exactly how much damage did John Bolton do during his tenure at the United Nations? Let us count the ways.
The United States may well have its way and exclude Venezuela from the UN Security Council, in retribution for Hugo Chávez's diabolical roast of George W. Bush. But doesn't the world have larger issues to worry about?
South Korea's quiet-spoken and principled Ban Ki-moon, who has just been nominated to replace Kofi Annan as the UN Secretary General, may find it difficult to confront US unilateralism.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon now has a virtual lock on succeeding Kofi Annan as UN Secretary General. Does he have what it takes to be a mediator between Bush's Washington and the rest of the world?
The election campaign for the UN's next Secretary General is the most transparent in history, but the politics are as murky as ever. As diplomatic wrangling continues, one thing is clear: The next leader will come from Asia.
President Bush's address to the UN General Assembly was less disdainful than earlier speeches, but it shined a light on the President's willful blindness to the complexity of the problems facing the Mideast and the world.
The UN's mixed record on the war in Lebanon proves we should lower our expectations of what it can meaningfully achieve.
After thirty-one days of war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and more than 1,000 dead, the United Nations has finally passed a cease-fire. Now what?
The United Nations can be a useful tool in settling the current crisis in Lebanon and Gaza, but only with US support. It is up to President Bush to get on the phone to Ehud Olmert and tell him to stop.
Ian Williams : US Foreign Policy
Selection of a new UN Secretary General is too important to be engineered by the whims and prejudices of John Bolton. It's time for saner voices in the Administration to tell the UN ambassador his time is up.
If the United Nations is to keep its promise to grant people with AIDS universal
access to treatment by 2010, it will be because activists are holding
world leaders accountable.
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