UN Dispatch

Thousands of delegates gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, last week for the UN Civil Society Conference. The gathering was dedicated to the upcoming Summit of the Future, a major UN conference in September intended to reform and revitalize the UN and the multilateral system. The Nairobi civil society conference was an important opportunity for advocates, the NGO community, and other interested parties t…

Each year, the United Nations Development Program produces the Human Development Report. This is a compilation of country-level data around education, health, and economic security that aspires to give a more holistic understanding of a country’s development beyond economic indicators alone. UNDP has been putting this Human Development Report together for decades, and while some countries would s…

On Friday, May 10, the General Assembly will hold a vote on Palestine’s bid to become a full member of the United Nations. The vote is largely symbolic. An entity can only become a full UN member with the approval of the Security Council, and Palestine’s bid failed in a vote last month due to a U.S. veto. However, this General Assembly vote provides the 193 existing UN member states an opportunit…

El Fasher is the largest city in Sudan’s Darfur region. It is also one of the few major cities in Darfur that has not fallen to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) during the civil war that broke out last year. However, an attack on El Fasher seems imminent. The RSF has surrounded the city and is laying siege to it. The United States, the United Nations, and key players around the world a…

The UN has a solid track record when it comes to environmental treaties. To be sure, governments are still far short of meeting the Paris Agreement goals, and the Conference of Parties (COP) process to close that gap is woefully insufficient. However, when it comes to crafting more narrowly targeted environmental treaties, the United Nations has been broadly successful. The 1987 Montreal Protocol…

The single largest humanitarian crisis in the world turns one year old today. Since a full-scale civil war erupted in Sudan exactly one year ago, some 8 million people have been displaced. This includes nearly 2 million who fled as refugees to bordering countries that can hardly handle the sudden influx of desperate people leaving their homes. The United Nations is now warning of famine in parts …

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, better known as UNRWA, was established in 1949 to support Palestinians displaced during the first Arab-Israeli war. Today, it provides services and humanitarian relief to nearly 6 million Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and of course Gaza. There has always been some tension between Israel and UNRWA, but since the October 7th attack…

By Aishwarya Machani Never before have more people had more opportunities for political expression. 4.2 billion people worldwide will have a chance to hit the polls this year, making it the biggest election year in history. And social media now gives 4.9 billion people worldwide a platform to voice their political opinions. Yet young people, who form a majority of the world’s population and who a…

The Security Council finally passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The resolution was crafted by the so-called “E-10.” These are the ten non-veto-wielding elected members of the Security Council who can sometimes band together and shame the P-5 into taking action they might otherwise veto. In this case, the United States cast a decisive abstention, marking the first time…

The Commission on the Status of Women concludes this week at the United Nations. The CSW, as it is known, is one of the major annual events at UN headquarters. In terms of sheer size and number of participants it is second only to the opening of the UN General Assembly in September. But unlike UNGA, it rarely gets much media attention, at least not the kind of attention commensurate for a diploma…