• Kofi Annan

     

    Guatemala’s Role on the Security Council, as Viewed by Its Ambassador

    by  • March 5, 2013 • ICC, Security Council, UN Diplomats • 3 Comments

    Gert Rosenthal, Guatemala's ambassador to the UN

    Gert Rosenthal does not sound like a Spanish name, but the mother of Rosenthal, the Guatemalan ambassador to the United Nations, was born there and his father was German. To complicate matters, “a little accident happened,” he said, as his parents, Florence and Ludwig, left Germany in the 1930s, and Rosenthal was born in Amsterdam. [...]

    Read more →
    BOOKS  

    Kofi Annan: The Back Story

    by  • January 28, 2013 • Africa, BOOKS, Secretary-General • 

    Kofi Annan

    Frederic Eckhard, the United Nations spokesman for eight and a half of Kofi Annan’s 10 years as secretary-general, was certainly well placed to write a tell-all account of that action-packed era. But readers of Eckhard’s new book, “Kofi Annan: A Spokesperson’s Memoir,” get that and something more. Along with the insider accounts, there’s the portrait [...]

    Read more →
     

    Rape in War: It’s Not a Given Any Longer

    by  • January 9, 2013 • Africa, Human Rights, ICC, International Justice, Women's Issues • 4 Comments

    Women at the Stop Rape in Conflict Now campaign in Cartagena, Colombia

    One of Fatou Bensouda‘s missions as the new chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court is to make rape during conflicts a thing of the past. Until 20 years ago, she said in a speech at the United Nations recently, sexual violence and other sexual attacks were “all but ignored and dismissed as regrettable but [...]

    Read more →
     

    The Syrian War, Picked Apart by a Diplomat Who Knows

    by  • November 20, 2012 • Middle East, Security Council • 3 Comments

    Jean-Marie Gguehenno of Columbia University

    The new creation of a national Syrian coalition to make the opposition groups more coherent could propel a much-needed breakthrough in the country’s 20-month civil war, Jean-Marie Guéhenno a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, told an audience there on Nov. 13. It has been a costly affair humanitarian-wise: close to 40,000 [...]

    Read more →
    BOOKS  

    Kofi Annan: Lessons in Futility

    by  • October 24, 2012 • BOOKS, Secretary-General, US-UN Relations • 5 Comments

    Kofi Annan

      Kofi Annan‘s existential crisis during his decade as United Nations secretary-general was without question related to the US-led invasion of Iraq. But the most fascinating part of his new memoir, “Interventions: A Life in War and Peace,” is the account of his numerous attempts to nudge the world toward a Middle East peace deal. [...]

    Read more →
    BOOKS  

    Reasons to Love and Criticize the UN

    by  • November 4, 2012 • BOOKS, US-UN Relations • 

    Minustah in Haiti peacekeepers

    In his new book, “Living With the UN: American Responsibilities and International Order,” Kenneth Anderson forces readers who lean sympathetically toward the United Nations to consider why they support it despite its faults. On the other hand, the acerbic views of Anderson, a law professor at American University, about the UN are deeply colored by his [...]

    Read more →
    BOOKS  

    The Quiet Korean: Ban Ki-moon Opens Up

    by  • October 26, 2012 • Asia, BOOKS, Secretary-General • 3 Comments

    Ban Ki-moon

    Over the last few years, an American journalist and academic, Tom Plate, has been writing a series of books called “Giants of Asia.” Lee Kuan Yew, the brilliant if steely founder of modern Singapore, was first. Then came Mahathir Mohamad, the former long-serving but short-tempered prime minister of Malaysia, and Thaksin Shinawatra, a deposed Thai [...]

    Read more →
    WORLDVIEWS  

    What the General Assembly Wants From the Secretary-General

    by  • August 13, 2012 • General Assembly, WORLDVIEWS • 2 Comments

    General Assembly president and Ban Ki-moon

    When the United Nations has been fortunate to have a secretary-general who has great charisma and skills in settling conflicts, the world tends to consider him a figure with his own political status and powers. People like this idea because in difficult times they want to have an authoritative mediator, a moral guide. But does [...]

    Read more →