UN in Focus
2022
Why doesn't the UN expel Russia like the League of Nations did in 1939?
After the Soviet Union invaded Finland, the League of Nations kicked the country from its council. Why doesn't the UN do that too? Well, for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because it is bound to the moral low ground.
Appeasement: Forfeiting somebody else’s justice
Appeasement is giving the school bully your lunch money in order to avoid being beaten up. In politics, however, it is more like giving the school bully someone else’s lunch money, to stop them from being picked on.
WHO? Yes, Tedros Again!
Tedros Ghebreyesus gets re-elected by the World Health Assembly (WHA) to a second term despite his affiliation with the repressive regime that has been accused of torture, repression, and electoral fraud.
Michelle Bachelet's visit to China: "Unacceptable" is a missing word from the UN's arsenal
Sadly, “concerns” is one of the strongest words in the United Nations’ arsenal, only a notch or two below “unacceptable”- its primary weapon – which, to no one’s surprise, was not used during this visit.
The three UN conventions on the laws of the sea and how they are failing to secure it
In this article, we will explore the three UN conventions that are designed to protect the laws of our seas: the UNCLOS, the ITLOS and ISA.
Rehauling Lady Justice: Is the United Nations guilty in Ukraine?
As long as international justice is left in the hands of nation states at the UN nothing will ever improve because self-interest will always win the day. This needs to change.
Gutterres' visit to Ukraine: Another blow to the UN
Guterres visit to Kiev made it once again clear: the UN is not led by principles, but by States that regularly flout the most basic standards of decency.
Letter to Putin: “You are a serial killer, but there is one thing I must thank you for…”
Putin, sometimes the West is as crazy as you are, but not for saying you should be removed, but for trying to mitigate the blow.
It shouldn't be NATO, it should be the United Nations: The Poetry of Appeasement
Once again, the UN fails to secure its primary mission of safeguarding world peace. But what can we do about it?
Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a death knell for the United Nations
Would you entrust a child you love to the care of a school or nursery if you knew that not only many of its teachers, but the school board itself, consisted of child abusers, rapists and murderers? Of course not! And yet that is exactly what we are doing when we entrust world peace and human rights to the United Nations.
Celebrity islands with the United Nations
Many may not know, but the United Nations is the creator of some of the worst “reality TV” of all time. This is The Gordian Magazine’s review of United Nations events as if they were reality TV.
Abstaining in the face of war
Apart from the hackneyed pleas to resolve the differences and a blunt reassertion of the facts there were no enlightened solutions aimed at finding ways of de-escalating the Ukraine crisis.
UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine Review: Abstaining Romance and Plenty of Hot Air
Participating members in this UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine attempt their best with this bland, shallow and awkwardly structured meeting, which can be characterised in 6 words: “Too late”, “nothing new” and “bad directing”.
2021
SDG 16: "People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones"
Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions are three fundamental facets of any progressive civil society in the 21st century. Therefore, as the UN is in many senses the world’s guardian, one of its utmost duties is to promote, instil and maintain these components globally to ensure collective harmony.
The UN is failing to eradicate poverty
Poverty, to put it simply, is one of humankind’s greatest ills and despite various ways to quantify, analyse or measure it, the problem remains unsolved. With the world finding itself in unprecedented straits owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has not only claimed the lives of 4,000,000, but has revealed ominous and record-breaking poverty worldwide, humanity more than ever needs its leaders to come together and work towards effective solutions.
"There is too much stupidity around": The UN's Climate Change Report
The Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was published on August 9, 2021. The Report paints a grim picture of the planet’s health owing to human induced climate change and rising temperatures.
Security Council Arria-Formula meeting on Myanmar
On July 29, the UN had a Security Council Arria-Formula meeting on the deteriorating situation in Myanmar. US ambassador and senior advisor for political affairs, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, summarised the dire situation, stating: “Humanitarian aid workers inside Burma are sounding the alarm.
UN is failing to combat Climate Change
Climate change is the world’s biggest collective enemy, which threatens to destroy the very planet that we all live on. Whether it be rising sea levels, global warming, record-breaking temperatures, melting ice caps or an overall shift in severity of natural disasters, we as humankind need to strategise together for immediate solutions.
5 Reasons Why You Should Not Trust The United Nations
The United Nations: the devil you know I met someone from a peculiar land with a completely messed up political system yielding a society that was plagued with poverty, oppression, corruption and strife. I commiserated until I found out that there actually was an alternative party that, given the chance, would put things right, yet nobody seemed to care about it.
UNESCO’s 44th Session: 27 sites that made it into the World Heritage List - in Pictures
The 44th session of the World Heritage Committee saw Liverpool stripped of its heritage status due to development concerns, while Venice and the Great Barrier Reef narrowly avoided being added to the list of endangered sites.
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