All Blog Posts from World Watch
U.N. diplomats play soccer for Sierra Leone victims
(Watch at left)
After the United Nations voted Saturday morning to expand the observer mission to Syria to monitor a shaky cease-fire, the secretary-general and ambassadors swapped business suits for soccer shorts in the afternoon to benefit the victims of violence in Sierra Leone.
Did they achieve more than they do at the U.N.? Not clear but they put aside politics for a good cause on a sunny day on Randall's Island.
Special Section: The Arab Spring
U.N. mission to Syria goes to regime-held town
Security Council OKs 300 observers to Syria
U.N. chief wants more observers in Syria
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks during a press conference April 17, 2012, in Luxembourg.
(Credit: AFP/Getty Images)In a letter to the Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon proposes a supervision mission of up to 300 observers in Syria.
Special Section: The Arab Spring
Syrian activists: Deadly soldier-defector clashes
U.S. Syria policy a tacit nod to Assad's firm grip
What can U.N. do about North Korea?
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, second right, salutes with the Korean People's Army senior officers, Vice Marshal and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Choe Ryong Hae (far right) during a mass military parade in Kim Il Sung Square, celebrating the centenary of the birth of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, in Pyongyang, North Korea, April 15, 2012.
(Credit: AP Photo/Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service)(CBS News) UNITED NATIONS - The language of Monday's U.N. Security Council's Presidential statement condemning North Korea's launch of a ballistic missile last Friday was particularly strong, deploring the launch as a grave security concern in the region. But the most important element of the council's condemnatory statement is that China - North Korea's strongest alley - was on board.
It gives weight to the fact that Beijing also considers North Korea's nuclear ambitions a threat to security.
After lengthy debate, and resistance from China during negotiations on Friday and Saturday, the U.N. issued its Presidential statement (which is a U.N. document that has to be adopted unanimously) condemning the rocket launch, making the point that any launch using ballistic missile technology - even if it a satellite launch or a space vehicle - is a violation of Security Council Resolutions.
That was intended to dispel any pretext by North Korea that its launch was for peaceful purposes, permissible under treaty obligations.
Israel-Palestine negotiators face deadly impasse
Ambassador Riyad Mansour
(Credit: CBS News)(CBS News) A day before Quartet on the Middle East mediators are expected to meet in Washington, D.C., the Palestine U.N. Observer, Ambassador Riyad Mansour, spoke with CBS News about prospects for peace. For 65 years, negotiations to bring peace to the Middle East have failed. This week, the Quartet principals -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov -- are scheduled to meet at Blair House in Washington, after having called for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks and for a framework agreement by the end of 2012.
The previous Quartet summit took place last September at U.N. headquarters at the same time that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, submitted an application for full Palestinian membership - a plan which later failed at the Security Council.
"The talks are stalled," said Mansour, "We hope that the Quartet can succeed in getting the negotiations out of the impasse that we are going through."
Continue »Annan's peace plan for Syria under fire
Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan meets with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, unseen, at the Great Hall of People in Beijing March 27, 2012.
(Credit: AP Photo)(CBS News) UNITED NATIONS -- At the same time that new assaults are being launched against cities in Syria by the government, U.N.-Arab League Special Envoy Kofi Annan tried to reassure the General Assembly that his peace plan was not functioning as a pretext for the Assad regime in Syria to buy time or to defeat the opposition. Many in the U.N. have come to see the Syrian conflict as an internationalized battle - a proxy war - between Russia and Iran on one side and the U.S. and the Gulf states on the other.
A still-divided U.N. Security Council adopted a non-enforceable Presidential Statement to bolster Annan just before he briefed the General Assembly.
With the deadline one week away for the cessation of all violence, at the U.N., diplomacy is decreasing and violence increasing ahead of the deadline. Despite the fact that Syria's Assad said that the government would begin to withdraw troops from population centers, the Syrian army shelled a suburb of Damascus and continued their assault on Homs.
Continue »U.N. Women's chief: Women's rights have progressed
CBS News' Pamela Falk speaks with executive director of U.N. Women Michelle Bachelet(pictured here) to get a better understanding of women's varying roles in the world.
And in the U.S., where women may be overtaking men in pay, Bachelet told CBS, "When women earn the money for the family, everyone in the family benefits. "We also know that when women have an income, everyone wins because women dedicate 90% of the income to health, education, to food security, to the children, to the family, or to the community, so when women have an income, everybody wins."
Continue »UN: Syria atrocities ordered from "highest level"
In this Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012 citizen journalism image provided by the Local Coordination Committees in Syria and accessed on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012, Syrian student protesters chant slogans, during a demonstration against Syrian President Bashar Assad, at the Aleppo University's Square, in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria.
(Credit: AP Photo/Local Coordination Committees in Syria)In what may be the basis for decisions by the Obama administration as well as the European Union and Arab nations on how to defend civilians in Syria, the U.N. Human Rights Council reported that Syria's military, under orders from the "highest level" of President Bashar al-Assad's government, has targeted civilians, shelled homes, raped and killed unarmed women and children, and tortured wounded protestors.
"Army snipers and Shabbiha gunmen posted at strategic points terrorized the population, targeting and killing small children, women and other unarmed civilians. Fragmentation mortar bombs were also fired into densely populated neighbourhoods," the report says.
Continue »Diplomat: U.N. cannot keep quiet on Syria
NEW YORK - Qatar led the 22-member League of Arab States in negotiations to draft a proposal calling on the United Nations to demand Syrian President Bashar Assad step down, and it was the first Arab nation to suggest sending troops to end the bloodshed in Syria.
In a report broadcast last month, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, told CBS' "60 Minutes" that Arab troops should be deployed to Syria to stop the killing that has claimed the lives of more than 5,400 Syrians since protests began nearly a year ago.
Now, the President of the U.N. General Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, told CBS News that peacekeepers may in fact be the solution to the Syrian crisis: "If Syria will not be stable, or in a civil war, that might lead to really a very bad situation, not only in Syria, but for the region."
Al-Nasser said the Emir's proposal to get the Arab League involved - in an effort to bring stability and security (and perhaps a political solution) and thus end the violence - means "it would be the Arab League's responsibility to send peacekeepers," noting that the Syrian government has already rejected that suggestion.
Can the U.N. keep Israel-Palestine talks going?
During his Middle East trip, Ban Ki-moon focused on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The U.N. Secretary-General was met with protesters in Gaza, who attacked his convoy with sticks and shoes, but was applauded by schoolgirls at a U.N.-run school in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
Continue »U.N. chief discusses the challenges of 2012
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's description of the global body as the "World Cup of Diplomacy" is, in part, an optimistic reflection of the world's chief diplomat, who has been plagued by less opposition and controversy than any of his seven predecessors.
Having been elected without contest to a second five-year term, Ban has outlined his priorities for the future, including lifting people out of poverty, following up on the Arab spring and transitions to democracy, creating jobs for young people and lifting people from abject poverty.
He has had his successes, among them; creating the division of U.N. Women, and establishing two special representatives to deal with violence against women and children; making sustainable development a priority and natural and manmade disasters a focus.
But as the world begins 2012, some of the crises facing the U.N. are more intractable.
Continue »