Diplomacy & Crisis News

Officially, Japan has “national security” concerns about technology exports to South Korea. Unofficially, World War II still casts an ugly shadow.

Republicans and Democrats have every reason to compromise and ratify the agreement.

More than one in 10 children – almost 20 million worldwide – failed to receive potentially lifesaving vaccines in 2018, the UN said on Monday, citing obstacles including conflict, cost and complacency. 

The decline and fall of an alliance.

At UN Headquarters, and across the globe, events are taking place on Monday to celebrate World Youth Skills Day – marked each year on 15 July – to raise awareness about the importance of youth skills development.

After nearly a decade of progress, the number of people who suffer from hunger has slowly increased over the past three years, with about one in every nine people globally suffering from hunger today, the United Nations said in a new report released on Monday.

Wood smuggling is big business for the terrorist group.

The administration has settled on a package of sanctions to punish Ankara for buying a Russian missile system.

Plus: Iran says it will talk—if U.S. sanctions end, Italy presents a migration plan, and what to watch in the world this week.

Access to education in Somaliland is extremely limited, with more than 50 per cent of children in Somaliland out of school. In an effort to address the problem, the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, has partnered with the government, and the global fund Education Cannot Wait, to launch a programme designed to help children affected by ongoing crises in the country.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned the terrorist attack that took place on July 12 in southern Somalia. 

The British ambassador to the United States exits the stage, and Europe tries to salvage the Iran nuclear deal.

The 41st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council ended on Friday with measures taken to address worrying developments in Eritrea, Syria and the Philippines, along with other issues of global concern, such as violence and discrimination against the LGBTI community.

In today’s Daily Brief: UN chief António Guterres condemns airstrikes on Syrian hospitals and meets survivors of Cyclones Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique; the UN Human Rights Council votes to investigate the “war on drugs” in the Philippines; and UN weather agency tracks fires…in the Arctic.

Determined children learning in classes without roofs, resilient women farming without tools or much land, and grateful people who survived a cyclone that destroyed their livelihoods; on his final day in Mozambique, UN chief António Guterres witnessed first-hand the inner strength and resilience of the storm-ravaged country's people.

Citing climate change as being caused by “emissions accumulated throughout history”, the head of China’s Xiamen Airlines told the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in New York on Friday that heavy carbon dioxide emitters should “take on greater responsibility” to ameliorate the problem.

Since 4 July, heavy monsoon rains and wind have pounded the refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, with deaths, displacement and major damage following in their wake, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday.

At the end of May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked Israel by calling for new national elections after he failed to form a governing coalition. Commentators dubbed the unprecedented new poll “Mo’ed B,” literally, a second scheduled date. The term also implies a second chance at success.

Despite failing to win a majority in the April elections, Israeli opposition parties of the center and the left didn’t seem to want a re-run; most of their lawmakers voted against the new elections. Ironically, it was the right-wing parties, who won a comfortable 65 seats (out of a total of 120), that voted themselves out of office. They clearly think they can do better. They may be right.

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Asia’s two largest and most diverse democracies held national elections in recent weeks, and religious tolerance was on the ballot in both. Voters, however, delivered diametrically opposed verdicts. 

In Indonesia, the government of incumbent President Joko Widodo (widely known as Jokowi) won by broadcasting a message of pluralism. Jokowi preached an inclusive nationalism that transcended Islam, Indonesia’s dominant religion, and won reelection by a decisive margin. 

In India, victory also went to the incumbent, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but on very different terms. Modi, who heads the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won in large measure by invoking his party’s vision of an India of and for the Hindus.

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On April 30, leaders of the Venezuelan opposition, among them National Assembly Chair and self-proclaimed interim President Juan Guaidó, gathered before dawn on a three-lane highway in Caracas to proclaim the start of “Operation Freedom,” an uprising to liberate Venezuela. Liberation, however, proved fleeting. A smattering of supposedly mutinous secret policemen had gathered for the uprising, yet within two hours of its proclamation, they had piled into their vehicles and sped off. As one opposition member present at the time later recalled, “It was over before it began.”

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