UN Dispatch

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…

The security and humanitarian situation in Haiti has deteriorated sharply over the last several days. The country had been ensnared in an enduring crisis following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, but now faces a critical juncture as gang violence surges and state authority wanes. Amid this chaos, Prime Minister Ariel Henry signaled his intent to step down. Meanwhile, an interna…

Western countries have seized hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian assets following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. Since then, the question of what to do with those assets has loomed large over debates about Ukraine. My interview guest Vladimir Milov is a former Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation and now a Russian opposition politician. He was an ass…

Alexander Ward ia national security reporter for POLITICO and author of the book “The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump.” We discuss the implications of Mitch McConnell stepping down as the leader of the Senate Republicans and delve into the key themes and insights from Ward’s important new book. We explore the concept of the “foreign policy for the middl…

In this Global Dispatches podcast episode, Clemence Landers of the Center for Global Development discusses the upcoming replenishments of several global development funds and the potential challenges they face. She highlights the significance of the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s branch that provides grants and concessional loans to the world’s poorest countries. La…