Showing 1 - 10 of 16
UN picks rights council members with bad records
Oped, John J Metzler, Published on 23/10/2025
» In a ritual of near-farcical folly, the UN General Assembly has elected 14 new members to join the Geneva-based Human Rights Council on Oct 15.
UN debate swerves, slides, but scores
Oped, John J Metzler, Published on 01/10/2025
» US President Donald Trump lambasted the United Nations on opening day for its failure to stop global crises in the midst of major regional wars, humanitarian disasters, looming security threats, never mind costly bureaucratic waste. But as the leader of the most prominent and founding UN member state, he then added that the world organisation isn't living up to its potential, and scathingly challenged, "What's the purpose of the United Nations?" The old rebuke, "You can do better!" Sometimes it works.
UN assembly shadowed by clouds of chaos
Oped, John J. Metzler, Published on 03/09/2025
» When the new UN General Assembly session opens next Tuesday, world leaders and diplomats will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the global organisation established in the wake of World War II to "maintain international peace and security" for future generations. But at headquarters here oin New York, delegates and staff will be doing far less celebrating than previously planned.
Jets can't fix trade
Oped, Postbag, Published on 03/05/2025
» Re: "Arms deals tied to US tariff talks", (BP, April 22).
Sudan's war and the Africa we don't see
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/04/2025
» Last Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: "Many have given up on Sudan, but that is wrong. It's morally wrong when we see so many civilians beheaded, infants as young as one subjected to sexual violence, more people facing famine than anywhere else in the world.... We simply cannot look away."
A 'retrospective' on Trump's first year back in job
Oped, Jeffrey Frankel, Published on 16/01/2025
» Predictions about 2025 come with flashing caveats: no one can know what US President-elect Donald Trump will do, let alone how the rest of the world will respond. But one can speculate. Imagine it is January 2026.
Perfect storm confronts UN assembly meet
Oped, John J Metzler, Published on 28/09/2024
» Powerful thunderclaps from the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan rumbled as a dire greeting to the opening UN General Assembly session in New York. Winds from ongoing but unresolved humanitarian crises the world over from Sudan to Syria and Somalia swirled. And a nervous atmosphere of widening conflicts, some still yet to happen, settled over assembled delegates.
World oblivious to risk of all-out war in Africa
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/05/2024
» 'We could see an all-out war between all the tribes and that is really the doomsday scenario. At this point, it's not unrealistic," the head of an international non-government organisation that is working in Sudan told the Al Jazeera news agency last week. (She asked them to withhold her name to protect her in-country team in North Darfur.)
How we can break free from polio
Oped, Andrew Stein, Published on 25/10/2023
» Eradicating polio has taken far longer than anyone expected. But the last 35 years of efforts to immunise every child against polio represent a major win for global health: a 99% reduction in cases means that nearly 20 million people are walking today who otherwise would have been paralysed.
Zero hunger target is still possible
Oped, Jordan Dey, Published on 08/08/2023
» This year marks the halfway point for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the ambitious set of global targets introduced by the United Nations in 2015.