Alpha Oumar Konare, chairperson of the African Union Commission, says it is "scandalous" to spend $2-billion annually on the upkeep of a proposed 26Â 000-strong joint AU-United Nations mission in Darfur when Africa’s urgent needs are elsewhere.
A long-awaited international convention against nuclear terrorism will come into force next week, nine years after it was originally proposed by Russia and 10 months after it was adopted by the 192-member United Nations General Assembly. But most of the major powers, including those with nuclear weapons, are giving it a miss — at least so far.
The legitimacy of a much-ballyhooed Security Council meeting on climate change has been challenged by developing nations that argue that the threat to the global environment is not a subject within the purview of the UN’s most powerful political body. There is "no role" envisaged for the Security Council on climate change, Pakistan’s ambassador said.
When the West African state of Liberia was torn apart by 14 years of civil war, the victims of the brutal insurgency included mostly women and children who were subject to rape and sexual violence. ”Not only are the terrible consequences of this still felt by many Liberian women today, but violence against women and rape continue unchecked,” says a new study on Liberia by ActionAid
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/ 28 February 2007
The torture of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad and the wilful abuse and humiliation of terror suspects in the United States detention facility in Guantánamo Bay have been interpreted by human rights activists as violations of the 1987 UN Convention against Torture.
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/ 16 January 2007
When the United Nations launched a probe into ”misconduct and mismanagement” in UN procurement last January, it moved against eight staffers who were temporarily suspended pending investigations. But one year later, six of the eight staffers have been reinstated with no charges against them.
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/ 22 November 2006
Less than six weeks before he steps down as Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan has come up with a political scorecard on the successes and failures of the UN’s much-touted development agenda. The good news is that official development assistance — from rich to poor countries — is reaching a new high.
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/ 16 November 2006
As the United Nations continues to battle waste, mismanagement and corruption, an outgoing senior official has proposed that all high-level UN staffers should not only disclose their private financial assets but also make them public. Outgoing Secretary General Kofi Annan Annan signed his financial disclosure forms last month.
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/ 13 November 2006
The United Nations says that international aid work is one of the world’s most hazardous professions, in which humanitarian workers are constantly threatened with — or victims of — kidnappings, harassment, detention and deadly violence. A UN study points out that hundreds of aid workers and UN humanitarian personnel continue to face risks in some of the world’s major trouble spots
The United Nations, which is fielding more than 19 800 peacekeeping troops in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is virtually fighting a losing battle to contain the ongoing recruitment of child soldiers in a country the size of Western Europe.