United Nations

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• SOURCE: Global Policy
  7/16/2020
  

  “A Tragic Illusion” - Did the Atom Bomb Make the United Nations Obsolete Three Weeks After its Birth?

  by Tad Daley

  President Harry Truman's knowledge of the imminent success of the Manhattan Project led him to fear that the United Nations' charter was inadequate to the task of preventing war; the Cold War meant that a better form of internationalism was never achieved. 

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• 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. 

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• 4/19/2020
  

  American Women at the UN: From Breakthrough to Dumping Ground?

  by Philip Nash

  More women belong in senior foreign and national security policy positions—at State, Defense, the National Security Council, and beyond—and not just at the United Nations.

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• 9/22/19
  

  The Two Internationalisms

  by Lawrence Wittner

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

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  9/5/19
  

  Lessons from the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, 25 years after the genocide it failed to stop

  by Samantha Lakin

  Despite the broader mission’s many well-documented failings, peacekeepers took risks to save lives, going beyond official orders to protect innocent Rwandans.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  7/30/19
  

  Historian Tim Naftali Unearths Audio of Ronald Reagan's Racist Conversation with Nixon

  by Tim Naftali

  In newly unearthed audio, the then–California governor disparaged African delegates to the United Nations.

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• 3/24/19
  

  America, Palestine, and UNRWA: A History of Self-interest

  by Laura Robson

  Donald Trump recently announced he would withdraw from the American commitment to provide some $300 million to UNRWA. Here is the history of the organization and American involvement. 

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• 3/3/19
  

  Remembering Audrey Hepburn's Best Role

  by William Lambers

  How her experiences as a child motivated her commitment to ending children's hunger.

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• 10-8-17
  

  Should Limiting North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions Be the Responsibility of the U.S. Government?

  by Lawrence Wittner

  The UN might be in a position to broker a peace that we can’t.

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• SOURCE: NYT
  7-15-17
  

  Do Spy Agencies Hold Answer to Dag Hammarskjold’s Death? U.N. Wants to Know.

  After 56 years and many investigations, there is new hope that secrets lurking in Western intelligence archives could solve the biggest whodunit in United Nations history: the mysterious death of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold.

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• 1-31-17
  

  Defund and Quit the United Nations? The Campaign to Do so Has Moved into High Gear.

  by Edwin Black

  This is the inside story of how it’s come about.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• The Syrian Problem -- and an International Solution

  by Lawrence S. Wittner

  Look to the United Nations. It's the legal thing to do.

• 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.