United Nations

Last week in the United Nations Security Council, Russia and China blocked a resolution that would have demanded an end to fighting in the Syrian province of Idlib, the final stronghold of the opposition. It marks the 13th time that Russia has used its veto to block Security Council action on Syria

The US decision to impose travel restrictions on Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif when he made a visit to UN headquarters in New York for a 17 July meeting inflamed already strained tensions between Tehran and Washington. In a break from the usual courtesy extended to foreign dignitaries

China’s Belt and Road Initiative is best known for big infrastructure projects such as train lines and ports, but in this age of omnipresence online, there is a communications counterpart running in parallel, known as the Digital Silk Road. But as with the physical manifestations of China’s big

Overnight, the UN Security Council held its annual Open Debate on Conflict Related Sexual Violence. As current president of the Council, Germany hosted the debate. It has been preparing all year and held an Arria Formula meeting in February on strengthening accountability for conflict-related sexual

As it happens, the United States holds the presidency of the United Nations Security Council during the annual diplomatic gabfest at the UN General Assembly. Traditionally, that means the president of the US can choose to chair a Security Council meeting if he or she desires to spotlight a

Those concerned with global peace and justice are grieving the death of Kofi Annan. Annan was elected UN Secretary-General in 1996 after a vigorously contested election campaign. Boutros Boutros-Ghali from Egypt had been denied a second term by US opposition in the Security Council. There was

Indonesia has successfully won its bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council 2019–20, but what is the country likely to achieve? There are, of course, significant constraints to what a non-permanent member of the Security Council can do within the UN

The Davos summit is taking place this week. At the Center for Global Development, Michael Clemens and Kate Gough argue that human mobility and migration solutions should be a central topic of discussion. Egypt and Ethiopia are fighting over the Nile. Damming the Blue Nile tributary

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for: Its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of

The UN Security Council has unequivocally failed the Syrian people: over 400,000 of whom have been killed, over 5 million of whom are refugees, and around 6.3 million of whom are internally displaced.  The recent resignation Carla del Ponte from the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria is

Kevin Rudd's bid to nominate as a candidate for the next UN secretary general (SG) has been vetoed by the Turnbull Government. This is more than a little embarrassing for everyone concerned. In a few hours, many UN observers will wake to the news of Rudd's thwarted campaign and shake their heads

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has just announced that Australia will bid for a seat on the UN Security Council in 2029-30. That's 15 years from the end of our last Security Council seat (2013-14). But it compares against the 27 years between our fourth and fifth outings at the Security Council.

The staggering dimensions of the migrant flow into Europe prompts me to offer a note on the Cambodian refugee crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which I played a small part. I am not suggesting that what happened 35 years ago offers any answer to current challenges. Rather, the

The UN is the go-to organisation for virtually every forgotten international crisis. While the West has struggled on in Afghanistan and Iraq, the UN and its peacekeeping missions have been deployed to just about everywhere else: Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Darfur, Mali, Liberia

New Zealand's decisive victory at the UN last month,  winning a Security Council seat for two years from January 2015, surprised even the quietly confident. Securing 145 votes out of 193 in the first round of voting assured New Zealand the two-thirds majority required to get onto the Security

The UN Climate Change Summit is taking place in New York tomorrow, with attendance by several world leaders including US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Over the past weekend, nearly 300,000 people marched in the streets of New York to urge a global consensus on

Wherever Kevin Rudd goes, leadership speculation seems to follow. During his time in Australia, it centred on the stewardship of the Australian Labor Party. Now that he is based in America, it involves an even more disparate, unruly and opaque body, the UN. According to a front-page report in The