United Nations 
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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.
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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”?
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/3/2020
Brian Urquhart, a Foundational Leader at the United Nations, Dies at 101
"In the mid-1950s, as the lone official in Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s inner circle with military experience, Mr. Urquhart helped invent the practice of U.N. peacekeeping through the establishment of the U.N. Emergency Force."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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