United Nations

UN Official Seeks G20 Focus on Inequality, Global Taxation

August 03, 2018

In a speech to Group of 20 (G20) finance ministers in Buenos Aires, UN Development Programme Administrator Achim Steiner called for national financial policies that aim to achieve key UN social and environmental objectives, including reducing economic inequality and introducing “a coherent set of international tax rules.”
US Resists IP Flexibilities Statement in Tuberculosis Declaration

August 03, 2018

Intellectual Property Watch reports that, due to opposition from the US delegation, a recently finalized UN Political Declaration on the Fight Against Tuberculosis contains no operative statement encouraging countries to exercise WTO-recognized IP flexibilities in licensing the manufacture of low-cost drugs to combat the disease.
UN Officials Promote Global Human Right to Abortion

August 02, 2018

Stefano Gennarini of the Center for Family & Human Rights reports that the chiefs of the World Health Organization and the UN Population Fund recently published an article arguing that internationally agreed standards on the protection of “sexual and reproductive health rights” include a right to abortion access.
UN Agent Warns of Israeli “War Crime” Against Bedouin Village

August 02, 2018

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Palestinian territories Michael Lynk has warned Israel that the planned demolition of a Palestinian Bedouin village near Jerusalem would amount to a “war crime” and called for Israeli leaders to be held “legally and diplomatically accountable” if it proceeds with these “clearly unjust” plans.
US Sees Signs of Change in UNGA on Israel

August 02, 2018

Members of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy team write that a vote on an Algerian resolution at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) blaming Israel for violence in Gaza, in which more nations voted for a US amendment to condemn extremist group Hamas than voted against it, is a positive sign of change at the normally anti-Israel UNGA.
UN Faces Accountability Questions over Sex Abuse

August 01, 2018

Raising new questions of accountability within the international organization, The Daily Mail reports on over 1700 allegations of sexual abuse committed by civilian and military personnel of UN peacekeeping operations, with only 54 perpetrators sent to prison for such offenses.
UN Agencies Demand Compliance with Mexican Abortion Ruling

August 01, 2018

Stefano Gennarini of the Center for Family & Human Rights reports that a group of UN agencies have called on the Mexican state of Veracruz to comply with a federal ruling, made in line with “international standards on human rights,” ordering the state’s legislature to decriminalize abortion.
UN Agency Promotes Agricultural Climate “Resilience”

August 01, 2018

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Agency has launched the second stage of the Forest and Farm Facility Initiative, to be rolled out over the next five years, to support forest and farm producer organizations in helping to make lands resilient to the negative impacts of global warming.
Hungary Announces Opposition to UN Migration Compact

August 01, 2018

Reuters reports that the Hungarian government has announced it will not sign the UN’s Global Compact on Migration, recently approved by all UN member states except for the US and set for formal acceptance in December, because the instrument “is entirely against Hungary’s security interests.”
UN Chief Seeks Embedding of SDGs Across Policy Spectrum

July 31, 2018

Closing the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, at which UN members present their progress toward achieving the UN’s wide-ranging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted the scope of the SDGs by calling on states to “embed the essence of the 2030 Agenda into everything that we do.”