In recent weeks, the United States has faced criticism both from the international community and from U.S. citizens for its stance on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. On Feb. 20, 2024, the United States vetoed the Algerian draft proposal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire at the U.N. Security Council vote, NPR reported.
A Kenyan court ruling just damaged the prospects for a peacekeeping mission to Haiti. On Friday, Jan. 26, the High Court of Kenya blocked the deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers intended to take part in a peacekeeping mission to Haiti on the basis that Kenya’s government did not follow the correct procedure to authorize the mission, The New York Times reported.
Tensions ran high at a recent United Nations meeting in New York City, where discussions about climate disasters, the ongoing war in Ukraine and the absence of several prominent world leaders divided delegates. During the week of Sept. 18, world leaders gathered for the U.N.’s 78th General Assembly Session. According to The New York Times, only one of the world leaders of the five permanent members of the Security Council, President Joe Biden of the United States, attended.
The United Nations adopted a new resolution on March 29, 2023, which requested that the International Court of Justice give an advisory opinion on countries’ obligations to combat climate change, a U.N. press release reported. The U.N. also asked the ICJ to weigh in on the consequences for countries that do not provide aid to efforts that combat climate change. The resolution highlighted developing island nations and the global south as regions that experience the impacts of climate change disproportionately.
According to a report published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the neurotoxin mercury exists in multiple facets of people’s lives. The EPA also reported that the ingestion of large amounts of mercury can have serious negative health effects, particularly impacting the nervous system. Symptoms of mercury poisoning include tremors, insomnia, memory loss, headaches, muscle weakness and, in extreme cases, death. To address this global challenge, representatives from state governments, United Nations agencies, academia and civil society gathered in Bali, Indonesia at the second segment of the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury in March, according to the Minamata Convention’s website.
“What you see today, a young girl forced to marry, get pregnant and [die], is not an aberration. It is part of the same continuum. Female persons are not seen as fully human, with individual rights, choice, rights to control our own bodies,” Zimbabwean feminist activist and the international head of Action Aid International, Everjoice Win, declared on Twitter on Aug. 6 in response to the widespread practice of child marriages in Zimbabwe.
BY VICTORIA WANG ’20
The efforts to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal are dominating discussion at the 73rd United Nations General Assembly Session, which opened on Sept. 18 in New York City and will last for 3 weeks, until Oct. 5. The annual session gathers its 193 leaders of member states to debate on pressing global issues of the year, ranging from national security disputes to environmental concerns.
EMMA COOPER ’20
Mita Hosali gave a presentation on her position as the deputy director at the United Nations News and Media Division on Thursday, April 5 in Gamble Auditorium. Hosali began with a quote from Dag Hammarskjöld, who served as the United Nation’s second security-general: “The United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”
