United Nations Archive

Believers in international cooperation need to be optimists. It takes faith and patience to endure the endless conferences, committees and communiques that make up multilateral diplomacy. But even upbeat advocates of global governance are liable to feel gloomy about the prospects for two major meetings scheduled for next month. The first is the annual G-20 summit, to be hosted by Russia in St. Petersburg on Sept. 5-6. The second is the gathering of world leaders for the opening of the new session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York beginning Sept. 24. Both events are more likely to highlight […]

There will be many eulogies for Sergio Vieira de Mello in the weeks ahead. Next Monday, Aug. 19, marks the 10th anniversary of the death of the charismatic Brazilian United Nations official in Baghdad. The veteran of humanitarian and peacekeeping missions from Sudan to Timor-Leste had reluctantly taken the post of U.N. special representative to Iraq after the U.S. and its allies toppled Saddam Hussein. When a suicide-bomber killed him and 21 of his colleagues in an attack on their lightly guarded headquarters, U.N. officials were traumatized. He remains a totemic figure for the organization today. His admirers will doubtless […]

Experts on post-conflict reconstruction don’t talk much about the idea of honor. They emphasize worthy but bloodless concepts like good governance instead. Yet appealing to national pride can do wonders for a politician aiming to inspire the citizens of a war-damaged country. In Mali, for instance, it has worked for Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a veteran politician who is on course to be the country’s next president. He has promised to restore “the honor of Mali” after its collapse into civil war in 2012, during which Tuareg separatists and Islamists seized the north of the country, necessitating an intervention by France […]