Departments

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United Nations

  • 3/28/2021

    Can Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Overcome the Opposition?

    by Lawrence Wittner

    People who want to end the nightmare of nuclear destruction that has haunted the world since 1945 should consider widening the popular appeal of nuclear weapons abolition by strengthening the UN’s ability to provide international security.

  • 3/21/2021

    Has the One World Idea's Time Come Again?

    by Samuel Zipp

    Can remembering the “one world” vision for America’s global role—largely forgotten today ­–­ help us get beyond both America First and the “liberal world order”?

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    10/6/2020

    America May Need International Intervention

    by Peter Beinart

    When other democracies have fallen into peril, they have sought help from the United Nations. The United States might consider it, writes Peter Beinart, since Black Americans have long had to appeal to the community of nations to intervene to secure their democratic rights. 

  • SOURCE: Black Perspectives
    8/31/2020

    ‘Ten Days in Harlem’: An Interview with Historian Simon Hall

    An interview with historian Simon Hall examines the links between revolutionary Cuba, anticolonial rebellion, and civil rights militancy in the United States as revealed by Fidel Castro's 10-day visit to Harlem and the United Nations in 1960.

  • 5/17/2020

    Who Can Learn From Taiwan? Apparently not WHO

    by Keith Clark

    The World Health Organization is unable to effectively learn from Taiwan's response to COVID-19 because the agency adheres to a "One China" policy that doesn't recognize both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan. 

  • 9/22/19

    The Two Internationalisms

    by Lawrence Wittner

    The right has long criticized internationalism, but why is the left doing so today? 

  • SOURCE: WSJ
    10-13-15

    Japan May Cut Unesco Funds Following Nanjing Massacre Listing

    Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Tuesday said Japan may cut its financial contribution to an agency of the United Nations after the organization added documents on the Nanjing Massacre to its International Memory of the World Register last week.

  • SOURCE: Travaux: The Berkeley Journal of International Law Blog
    3-31-15

    Forty Years to the Zionism Equals Racism Resolution

    by Dr. Yoav Tenembaum

    Forty years ago this year, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) adopted a resolution equating Zionism with racism and racial discrimination.

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Ed.
    6-3-13

    Jay Winter: Raphael Lemkin, a Prophet Without Honors

    Jay Winter is a professor of history at Yale University. His latest book, René Cassin and Human Rights, with Antoine Prost, is just out from Cambridge University Press.When did the Second World War end? In the absence of a formal peace treaty in 1945, we celebrate on the dates of military surrender—V-E Day (May 8), or V-J Day (August 15). But in a sense, it would be better to see December 9-10, 1948, as when the war came to an end. It was then that the United Nations, sitting in plenary session in Paris, voted for two major advances in international law, which together said to the world: "Never again." The last joint operation of the war against the Axis powers was to establish a human-rights regime to affirm everything the Nazis tried to destroy.The first law was the Genocide Convention; the second was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Their passage in a 24-hour period was an astonishing achievement. Consider the moment. The Berlin blockade had been under way for six months. The bloodbath attending the end of British rule in India was continuing. The Arab-Israeli war of 1948 had ended, for the time being. Mao's army was approaching Beijing. Eight months later, the Soviet Union would explode its first atomic bomb. The cold war was well and truly on.