The ecstatic press releases started even before the conference to replenish the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria officially closed last month in Montreal. The fund, which channels donor money to local programs that fight the three diseases in places where they are the most damaging, especially sub-Saharan Africa, had put out a call for $13 billion for its next three years of programming. By the end of the conference, the fund had raised $12.9 billion. The bulletins out of Quebec captured the relief of a public health community that has watched its international financing dwindle, even as [...]
Does Moscow care at all about international declarations of outrage over its behavior in Syria? Could threats of legal action against Russian officers involved in the siege of Aleppo affect their decisions? Over the past week, Western and Arab diplomats made a concerted push to shame Russia and the Syrian regime into curtailing their operations in Aleppo, with a flurry of meetings and statements in Brussels, New York and Geneva. But it is not clear that President Vladimir Putin and his advisers take all this sound and fury very seriously. The crisis may just exacerbate splits between Western and non-Western [...]
Are Antonio Guterres and Hillary Clinton on course for a clash over Syria in early 2017? The question may seem premature. Guterres was only confirmed as the next United Nations secretary-general last week and will take up the post at the beginning of January. Clinton is still campaigning hard to be U.S. president. If, as now seems likely, she wins November’s election, Clinton and Guterres will face a common dilemma over what to do about Syria from the start of next year. The Russian-backed assault by Syrian forces on Aleppo has left both the Obama administration and the U.N. on [...]
