United Nations Archive

The world has done a dreadful job of managing the civil war in Syria. Could it do any better at rebuilding peace there, if and when hostilities eventually slow down? This prospect still seems sadly remote. The Syrian government indicated last week that it is still not ready for new peace talks led by the United Nations. Yet there are signs that the regime is getting nervous. President Bashar al-Assad admitted this weekend that his army is depleted and has deliberately withdrawn from some battlefronts. In the event of a series of further defeats, the regime could yet conclude that […]

Yesterday, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 2231, which confirmed key provisions of the nuclear deal—officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—adopted last week by Iran and its P5+1 negotiating partners, comprising the U.S., France, the U.K., Russia, China and Germany. In her speech marking the resolution’s enactment, Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, drew several lessons from the lengthy efforts to constrain Iran’s nuclear aspirations. These included the requirement for vigorous enforcement of global nonproliferation norms, the value of “tough, principled diplomacy,” the need for effective implementation of negotiated agreements and the imperative […]

Can international legal mechanisms defuse tensions among the West, Russia and China? Last week, U.S. and European officials praised their Chinese and Russian counterparts for helping seal the nuclear deal with Iran. Yet there were warning signs of new spats with Beijing and Moscow over the South China Sea and Ukraine. These tensions concern not only the countries’ core national interests, but also their readiness to submit these interests to legal reviews. China and Russia seem determined to ensure that, as great powers, they cannot be contained through international law. In The Hague, the low-profile but august Permanent Court of […]

On Tuesday an independent panel of experts released a scathing report criticizing the World Health Organization’s (WHO) response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The panel, led by the former head of Oxfam, Dame Barbara Stocking, said that politics and bureaucracy were to blame for the WHO’s mismanaged response and called for the WHO to create a new division to coordinate emergency responses. The report comes days after Liberia, which was previously believed to be Ebola-free, confirmed two new cases of the disease, prompting fears of a resurgence. While often harsh, the panel’s findings are unsurprising. As Jeremy Youde […]

If ambitious aliens reached Earth tomorrow, they might conclude that the planet is too troublesome to bother conquering: The world looks like an ungovernable place. The European Union faces an ever-intensifying crisis over Greece. Arab powers and their Western allies are struggling to keep up with terrorist attacks and atrocities by the Islamic State. The U.S. military reported last week that Russian and Chinese assertiveness now makes the chance of great-power war “low but growing.” Can these crises be defused? The answer may lie in Vienna, where talks on an Iranian nuclear deal are coming to a head, after widely […]

Last month the United Nations released a policy paper, “Uniting our Strengths for Peace,” on the future of peacekeeping. Written by a panel of 16 experts, including former East Timor President Jose Ramos Horta, the report is a subtly subversive summary of the current problems with U.N. peace operations. To further explore this subject, World Politics Review partnered with the Global Dispatches podcast to produce this interview with WPR columnist Richard Gowan. Gowan and host Mark Leon Goldberg discuss U.N. peacekeeping, the challenges it faces and how current trends in global security will force the U.N. to adapt. For more […]