WASHINGTON — If the term “track two” sounds like an announcement at Grand Central Terminal in New York, it has an altogether different meaning farther east at United Nations headquarters. Diplomats there suspect they’re hearing “track two” talks; that is, informal talks aimed at resolving problems, although the talks neither involve them nor any other official [...]
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Theodore Roosevelt’s approach to foreign policy was to “speak softly, and carry a big stick.” Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, has confused the two. North Korea’s rhetoric is nothing new — in fact, it’s become de rigueur for Pyongyang to threaten war whenever it wants an increase in its foreign aid allowance, much [...]
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When Burma won independence from Britain in 1948, it was a devastated country tormented by multiple crises. Geographical misfortune had placed this otherworldly Buddhist nation in the path of powerful armies in World War II as Japan battled Western allies for control of the strategically placed country. Its capital city, Rangoon, was heavily damaged; the [...]
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Iran has remained prominent on the radar screen of the United Nations Human Rights Council and other international human-rights groups that are concerned with the poor treatment of Iranians who dare to speak out against repression and corrupt laws. Human-rights groups are waiting to see if similar abuses will increase before the presidential election on June 14, 2013. The current [...]
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With the deadline for the departure of American and NATO troops from Afghanistan just a year away, civilian casualties in the country remain alarmingly high, says a new report from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama). Although the report said the number of casualties had decreased for the first time in six years, [...]
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For the developing world, the news in the 2013 United Nations Human Development Report is almost all good. (More on that “almost” later.) The title of the report, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World, sets the tone. New players with global clout, increased South-South trade and investment, strengthening regional institutions [...]
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Ieng Sary, a co-founder and the third-highest official in the murderous Khmer Rouge movement that decimated Cambodian society in the 1970s, died in a Phnom Penh hospital on March 14 at age 87. The death of Ieng Sary, who became the public face of the Khmer Rouge as the regime’s foreign minister, robs the already [...]
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Two years ago, commemorating International Domestic Workers Day on June 16, governments, labor unions and employers’ associations voted overwhelmingly to create global labor standards to help promote the rights of the 50 to 100 million domestic workers worldwide. The United Nations International Labor Organization, or ILO, adopted such a convention, No. 189, in 2011, [...]
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Hardeep Singh Puri, 60, the Indian ambassador to the United Nations, has announced his retirement, which will take effect at the end of February. Ashoke Mukherji, The Times of India reported, is likely to be Puri’s replacement at the UN. Puri has been ambassador to the UN since 2009. He led the country through its [...]
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Imagine a new world of innovative, inexpensive and successful learning, where dusty streets in rural towns in developing countries are lined with self-powered computer kiosks and children from poor neighborhoods have the same ability to work with new technology as children in richer areas do. That dynamic is the goal of new education policies put [...]
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