When US president George W. Bush came to the UN General Assembly on September 23, there was some expectation that his tone would be magnanimous and conciliatory. Six months after the US rode roughshod over the UN by launching a unilateral war against the wishes not only of the majority of the world’s unimportant states, but also of senior members of the Security Council, it was expected that the US might come to mend fences, as if from a position of strength, but with the underlying reality that the US needs international cooperation in the administration of occupied Iraq, given the problems it is having in securing its catch.
The US’s long-planned war on Iraq moved a significant step closer on November 8, when the US succeeded in extracting from its reluctant allies in the UN a legitimising resolution providing it with a fig-leaf of legality for its plans to topple Saddam Hussain and occupy Iraq...
The utter subservience of international institutions to the United States was confirmed on July 12, when the UN Security Council accepted American terms for its recognition of the newly-established International Criminal Court (ICC).
The UN’s long-awaited Food Summit, which was postponed after September 11, opened in Rome on June 10, only to be snubbed by western governments only sending junior-level delegations to attend it, although UN officials and leaders of African countries regarded it as crucially important when there are currently famines looming in several southern African countries.
On October 12 the Nobel prize committee in Oslo announced that it was awarding the United Nations Organization and Kofi Annan, its secretary-general, a peace prize in recognition of their work in pursuit of “a better organized and a more peaceful world.” This is the first time that the UN as a whole and its acting head have received the award.
The UN and Iraq look set for yet another confrontation: there is mounting concern in Washington about the growing perils facing American pilots flying over Iraq as Baghdad continues to improve its air defences. Baghdad has expelled eight UN staffers in recent weeks, accusing them of “violating their standard operating procedures” and passing security-related information to “enemy states.”
A Hamas mujahid was martyred in an operation against an Israeli target in the Ghazzah area of occupied Palestine on July 9. He was Nafez Ayesh al-Nadher, aged 26. He was driving near the Kissufim crossing-point between Ghazzah and 1948 Palestine and detonated his vehicle as a military vehicle passed. Israeli sources denied that any of its soldiers had been involved.
Iraq won a significant political victory on July 4, when the US and Britain were forced to abandon their ‘smart sanctions’ proposals and agree to a five-month extension of the ‘oil-for-food’ programme.
Americans are furious after the US was expelled from the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) earlier this month.
Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, sprang a surprise on March 19, when she announced that she would not seek a second term when her current four-year period of office ends next September.
Tens of thousands of Afghani refugees are at risk of starvation as a result of a three-year drought compunded by US-led Western sanctions. More than 100,000 have been forced to seek shelter in makeshift refugee-camps in Pakistan...
Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general, urged business leaders gathered at Davos, Switzerland, on January 29 to help him to achieve his goal of getting a thousand corporations to back his Global Compact.
Ten years after the overthrow of general Siad Barre, and the collapse of state institutions, Somalia remains shattered — despite the ‘election’ of a new president and parliament that enjoy considerable international diplomatic support, including the approval of the UN, countries of the region and most members of the Arab League.
Despite widespread concern about the impact of depleted-uranium weapons used by the West in Iraq and elsewhere, western governments refused to address the issues until their own troops started developing cancer.
The UN security council has passed two resolutions this last month, ostensibly against ‘international terrorism’, but in effect backing state terrorism against Islamic movements worldwide.
After 30 years as a false revolutionary, Colonel Mu’ammar Qaddafi is now marketing himself as an African hero and a hater of ‘everything Arab’, opening a racial can of worms with the potential of dividing the Muslims of the continent and setting ‘Arab’ against ‘African’ on a larger stage.
The routine bombing of Iraq by the US and Britain, and the UN sanctions kept in place by their vetoes, have taken a heavy toll of Iraqi lives, destroyed the country’s once-thriving economy, and reduced its people to poverty.
The Turkish government requested 45,000 body-bags from the UN on August 24, giving the first clear indication of the final death-toll it is expecting from the earthquake that struck north-western Turkey at 3am on the morning of August 17.
The Taliban government in Afghanistan has reacted angrily to Russian plans to establish a permanent military base in Tajikistan. The Taliban foreign minister, Mohammed Hasan Akhond, complained about the plans in a letter to UN secretary general Kofi Annan on April 11.
Morocco signed an agreement with the United Nations on February 12 defining the legal status of UN troops in disputed western Sahara after months of delay. The UN Security Council then voted unanimously to extend the UN mission’s mandate until March 31.
