We could see the smoke from the bombs on the satellite map Web site, Google Earth. Refugees were fleeing along the road from Beirut to Damascus. One of those refugees was our dear friend and colleague Elise Salem, who was visiting her native land of Lebanon when war broke out in July.
The recent conflict in Lebanon claimed more than 1,000 lives, caused billions of dollars in damages and threatened to violently destabilize the entire region. And then came U.N. Resolution 1701...
The following dialog takes place between a claimed supporter of the UN vision who believes the UN has failed and needs to be scrapped, and the executive director of the SWCT chapter. "...the United Nations appears to have become a failed organization, as exemplified by its failure to act in time to save at least many hundreds of thousands of lives in the genocides of Rwanda and Darfur, and by its most recent failures in achieving reasonable reform in regard to administrative and human rights structures..."
The Global Challenge Suppose the all nations agreed to educate children, provide clean water and sanitation, fight disease, reduce maternal mortality and promote gender equality, eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, and do this while promoting sustainability and reversing the loss of environmental resources? Sound utopian? Not only did all 189 members of the United Nations agree to this agenda, but...
The government appears poised for a showdown with at least 180 member states of the United Nations over the structure of a proposed new Human Rights Council. The rejection last week by the US of the draft resolution establishing the new council risks delaying for a long time the work of the proposed council, unraveling broad agreement among nations and leaving no alternative to the discredited Human Rights Commission.
President Bush first nominated Bolton over a year ago and the Senate refused to confirm him. At that time fifty-nine former high-level American diplomats, appointed by ten different presidents, issued an open letter stating: ---"he is the wrong man for this position at a time when the U.N. is entering a critically important phase of modernization, seeking to promote economic development and democratic reforms and searching for ways to cope better with proliferation crises and a spurt of natural disasters and internal conflicts."
As the deadline approaches to select UNA-Connecticut's high school essay contest winner, we have selected some of the best entries for your reading pleasure. Please check out the exceptional essays from Aerim Kim, Cameron Tepfer, and Sang Jung by clicking on the Publications section. These students make strong, well-reasoned cases for reform of the Security Council and the UNHCHR, and deserve a read from our members. The contest requirement is to write a letter to President Bush to advocate critical areas of United Nations reform. The contest winner will be announced here in the near future.
In his hard-hitting essay, Cameron Tepfer, a senior at Ridgefield High School, pushes historical and political imperatives in urging President Bush to use US influence to make positive Security Council reforms.
Aerim Kim is an 11th grader from Greenwich High School, and here makes an impassioned plea for reform to the UNHCHR as a way to improve both its internal mission credibility and public perception.
The United Nations Association Connecticut Division has recently published Ruth Steinkraus-Cohen / Ambassador of Peace – A History of the UNA of Connecticut and the International Hospitality Committee of Fairfield County. An introduction by our president Irving Stolberg is here.
U.S. Rendition Policy - Is Condi Channeling Keitel or Condor? - Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (IPS) - According to his memoirs, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel considered the secret abduction and rendition to Germany of suspected Resistance members -- otherwise known as the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) Decree -- to be the worst of all of the orders issued by Adolf Hitler for the western occupied territories of the Third Reich during World War II.
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