President-elect Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris Agreement, countering the Trump presidency’s notice of withdrawal from it in 2019.
by Mark Hertsgaard. Read more on PassBlue.
“The way we are moving is a suicide,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in an interview on Monday, and humanity’s survival will be “impossible” without the United States rejoining the Paris Agreement and achieving “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, as the incoming Biden administration has pledged.
The secretary-general said that “of course” he had been in touch with president-elect Biden and looked forward to welcoming the US into a “global coalition for net zero by 2050” that the UN has organized. The US is the world’s largest cumulative source of heat-trapping emissions and its biggest military and economic power, Guterres noted, so “there is no way we can solve the [climate] problem . . . …
OpEd: Although the struggle for “democratic space” has been uneven and hurt by China’s repressions, young activists could still trigger change
by Alan Doss. Read more on PassBlue.
Recent events in Hong Kong should alert those people who hope that economic development can lead to democratic change. A few weeks ago, the territory’s fragile democratic order took another hit when opposition members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council resigned to protest the disqualification of four of their members, labeled by the Chinese authorities as “unpatriotic.”
I have a personal attachment to Hong Kong reaching back to the days when I was working in Beijing for the United Nations Development Program. Hong Kong was the place where my family and I fled for short breaks from the drab conformism and irritating restrictions of the Chinese capital, which had yet to throw off the stultifying vestiges of the Cultural Revolution. Hong Kong, by contrast, was full of life, with its enticing restaurants, bustling stores, lively markets and modern services that worked with admirable efficiency. …
OpEd: It’s time for UN General Assembly to begin discussions regarding the selection process for the next secretary-general.
by Ben Donaldson. Read more on PassBlue.
LONDON — This time five years ago, Mogens Lykketoft, the president of the United Nations General Assembly, was working with members of the Security Council to create the first open process to appoint the next secretary-general, after the adoption of General Assembly Resolution 69/321. In 2021, the process will begin again to select the UN’s secretary-general for the term starting in 2022. But will it be inclusive?
For the first seven decades of the UN’s existence, the secretary-general was chosen through a process so opaque that it compared unfavorably to the papal selection. There was no official call for applications, job criteria, list of candidates or interviews. The decision was taken behind closed doors by the five permanent members of the Security Council (P5), Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, with some of the Council’s 10 elected members kept in the dark, and put forward to the General Assembly for ratification. …
This Week @ The UN: Catch up with what’s been happening at the world body.
by Dulcie Leimbach. Read more on PassBlue.
The United States embraces diplomacy again; human-rights warnings in Ethiopia; who is the US nominee for UN ambassador?
You are reading This Week @UN, highlighting the most important news on the world body. The information is drawn from the UN spokesperson’s briefings, our original reporting and other sources.
We know from diplomats and many other readers that our weekly summary of UN activities is very popular, but we need your support to keep it going: that is one way donations are used by PassBlue, to produce columns that readers rely on and need. So please help us keep this service going into 2021 by donating to our campaign and doubling your gift. …
It will only take a stroke of a pen for the US to rejoin the WHO, but it will need to deploy diplomacy to regain its important role .
By Irwin Arieff. Read more on PassBlue.
President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to move quickly once he is in office to reverse Donald Trump’s ill-founded pledge to cut ties to the World Health Organization during a deadly worldwide plague.
But it will not be easy for Biden to erase the damage, which will weigh on Washington’s standing in the international health arena and could well have a lingering impact on the management of the current pandemic as well as future ones.
Because of the way Trump withdrew from the WHO, it will take just the stroke of a pen for Biden to counter the action. But that will not stem the loss of influence, trust and collaborative opportunities that were lost on the global stage this year. …
Hopes for a new leadership & a better image of the US will rest on Biden’s campaign promises & the qualifications of his appointees
by Barbara Crossette. Read more on PassBlue
Advice is pouring into President-elect Joe Biden from around the United States and across the world on how to turn around the damage the Trump administration has inflicted in key policy areas. Advocates for public health, women’s rights and a semblance of restored American leadership are among those hoping for quick action starting the day Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20.
Hopes for a new style of leadership and a better image of the US in the world will rest on Biden’s campaign promises and the qualifications of the appointees he is placing in government posts. …
This Week @ The UN, highlights from the world body, through November 23, 2020
by Dulcie Leimbach. Read more on PassBlue.
Africans are fed up with being sidelined in the Security Council; hey, Joe Biden, don’t overlook the UN; a mother of five competes against 12 men in the Burkina Faso presidential election.
You are reading This Week @UN, highlighting the most important news on the world body. The information is drawn from the UN spokesperson’s briefings, our original reporting and other sources.
As a steadfast supporter of PassBlue’s mission to hold the UN and its members accountable, please donate to our most important fund-raising campaign of the year. Any amount you give — up to $5,000 — will be doubled. The money pays our reporters and their behind-the-scenes editors to produce the stories that you want to read, from women’s push for equality to the damaging power plays by the United States, China, Russia and other major countries at the UN. …
Listen to UN-Scripted’s latest episode
“America is back”: In this episode, UN-Scripted details the challenges the in-coming administration faces to fully commit to the UN again, including rejoining all the UN entities and agreements it left, resigned from or defunded under the Trump administration, like the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization. Sorting it all out are three experts:
- Larry Johnson, a professor at Columbia Law School and a former legal affairs expert at the UN;
- Paul Watkinson, a Franco-British climate change specialist who participated in the Paris accord’s negotiations; and
- Jordie Hannum, the head of the Better World Campaign, an organization that works to enhances the US-UN relationship.
Available on most podcast platforms, including:
One woman takes on 12 men for the presidency of Burkina Faso, a landlocked western African country.
by Clair MacDougall. Read more on PassBlue.
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Monique Yéli Kam’s war room is not a typical campaign headquarters for a national presidential candidate. A dusty white marquis stands next to stacked blue chairs fanning out to a balcony that leads to a room where teenage boys jostle to play a soccer video game. Upstairs in her apartment, PassBlue spoke with Kam, a businessperson-turned-politician who is the only woman running against 12 men in Burkina Faso’s presidential election scheduled for Nov. …
The incoming Biden administration faces the task of repairing a rocky relationship with the UN and its various programs. Experts weigh in.
by Stéphanie Fillion. Read more on PassBlue.
President-elect Joe Biden’s first message to fellow world leaders was clear: America is back. But there’s a glaring omission in his foreign policy plan: the United Nations.
After four years of the Trump administration’s defunding and leaving UN organizations and agreements, the United States’ relationship with the UN is ripe for revival. But what, specifically, does the new administration need to do?
PassBlue asked four legal and foreign policy experts to weigh in on the steps that are needed to re-engage with a range of UN agencies and initiatives: the Paris Agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran ( Iran nuclear deal), the Human Rights Council, Unesco, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East ( UNRWA), the UN Population Fund ( UNFPA) and the World Health Organization ( WHO). …
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