Category Archives: United Nations

Sabrina Dhowre Elba: ‘The old idea of aid is dead’

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The Canadian model and Ifad ambassador explains how she and husband Idris Elba hope to make a difference to rural communities in Africa

Since her marriage to British actor Idris Elba last year, Sabrina Dhowre Elba has found her love of Africa being rekindled. But it was her mother who persuaded Elba to take up her new role as an activist.

The actress and Vogue cover model is being credited with convincing the Canadian government to be the first to pledge $6m (£3.5m) to a UN agency Covid fund for struggling farmers after a persuasive Zoom chat with ministers while the Elbas were themselves in isolation with mild cases of the virus.

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Nagorno-Karabakh: Azerbaijan accuses Armenia of rocket attack

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At least one person killed in Ganja incident, as former Soviet republics move closer to war

Fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh has escalated dramatically after Baku accused Armenian forces of firing rockets at Ganja, which lies outside the contested territory.

At least one civilian was killed and four more injured in the attack on Sunday on Ganja, Azerbaijan’s second largest city, 100km (60 miles) north of the Karabakh capital, Stepanakert.

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DRC protesters demand justice over unprosecuted rapes and murders

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Women lead protests against conflict violence in Democratic Republic of the Congo, amid calls for action on hundreds of civil war crimes

Women led thousands of people in demonstrations in four cities across the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday, demanding justice for historic murders and rapes committed in the east of the country.

Organisers said police beat protesters in Kisangani, one of the cities, as they marked a decade since the UN documented hundreds of crimes in DRC between 1993 and 2003 that have not been prosecuted.

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Nagorno-Karabakh: UN urges ceasefire as Azerbaijan and Armenia dismiss talks

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Armenian prime minister says he regards aggression by Azerbaijan as an ‘existential threat’

The UN security council has called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to immediately halt the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh and urgently resume talks without preconditions as the conflict threatened to escalate beyond the region.

On Tuesday night, the UN’s most powerful body strongly condemned the use of force and backed secretary general Antonio Guterres’ call to stop the fighting, deescalate tensions, and resume talks “without delay”.

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UN to hold emergency talks on Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict

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Meeting on Tuesday follows two days of fighting over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh

Explainer: why is there fighting and what are the implications?

The UN security council will hold emergency talks behind closed doors on the ethnic Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where fighting continued overnight on Monday.

The meeting will be held at 5.00pm ET (2100 GMT) on Tuesday. Belgium formally requested the session, after France and Germany had led a push for it to be placed on the agenda.

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Most countries failing women and girls with Covid response, UN finds

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Global gender tracker assesses how governments address violence, strengthen women’s economic security and support unpaid caring

Most countries are failing to adequately protect women and girls during the fallout from Covid-19, according to a new UN database that tracks government responses to the pandemic.

The global gender tracker has looked at how 206 countries and territories address violence against women and girls, support unpaid care workers and strengthen women’s economic security.

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Protests flare in Papua as students demand independence referendum

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Police fire shots as crowds of demonstrators demand a vote on secession from Indonesia

Unrest has flared in the restive Indonesian region of Papua with police firing shots during a protest by hundreds of university students in the provincial capital, Jayapura.

The group was demonstrating against plans to extend a special autonomy law that protestors say has not done enough to help people in one of the country’s poorest regions.

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Trump First now drives US foreign policy. Even if it leads to war…

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The president’s baiting of China and Iran and shabby deals in the Gulf show he will risk almost anything to win re-election

It’s clear Donald Trump will do almost anything to cling to office. Lie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish? Go for it. Label Joe Biden a radical socialist? Silly, but worth a punt. Start a war with China or Iran? Pause right there. This is not beyond the realms of possibility, given his pathological need to win.

As November’s poll nears, Trump is weaponising foreign policy – not to defend US security and national interests, but to help him grab a second term. It’s not about putting “America First”. It’s all about putting “Trump First” – by any dangerous means, and at any cost.

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Belarus accuses western nations of sowing ‘chaos and anarchy’

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Country’s foreign minister attacks western ‘interference’, as Emmanuel Macron says president Lukashenko must go

Belarus’s foreign minister, Vladimir Makei, has accused western countries of attempting to sow “chaos and anarchy” in the former Soviet republic, which has been rocked by street protests since a contested election last month that was claimed by President Alexander Lukashenko.

“We are seeing attempts to destabilise the situation in the country,” Makei told the UN general assembly in a video statement on Saturday. “Interference in our internal affairs, sanctions and other restrictions on Belarus will have the opposite effect, and are harmful for absolutely everyone.”

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Scott Morrison to tell United Nations that if Australia finds Covid vaccine ‘we will share it’

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The prime minister warns nations will be severely judged if they try to profit from hoarding a vaccine

Scott Morrison will use a speech to the United Nations general assembly in New York to urge countries to share a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as a successful candidate emerges, characterising such collaboration as a “global and moral responsibility”.

Morrison will use his contribution to the general assembly 75th anniversary general debate, scheduled for Saturday morning Australian time, to revive concerns that some countries might see “short-term advantage or even profit” in hoarding the vaccine rather than sharing it with the world.

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China rejects Donald Trump’s ‘baseless’ coronavirus accusations – video

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China’s UN representative Zhang Jun said the country rejected 'baseless accusations' around coronavirus before introducing President Xi Jinping.

In a video address, Donald Trump said the UN had to take action against China and called for Beijing to be held accountable by the UN for 'releasing the virus'

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‘Our 1945 moment’: UN faces fears of a ‘great fracture’ at general assembly

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Amid prerecorded speeches, secretary-general issues warning over US-China rivalry at an unprecedented moment

“Today, we face our own 1945 moment,” the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said as he opened the UN’s 75th general assembly, to a thinly populated chamber of socially distanced diplomats.

Guterres meant the historical reference as a call to action inspired by the generation who had survived the second world war and sought to build a new world. A similarly concerted effort, he said, would be needed to defeat Covid and the pandemics that may follow, and the climate emergency.

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United Nations general assembly: China rejects Trump’s ‘baseless’ Covid accusations – live

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Follow live as Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin – among others – deliver video messages

...and we have photos of Xi Jinping’s background:

Some more analysis, this time from our diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, on Turkey’s talk:

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used his general assembly address to set out Turkey’s bitter objections to its exclusion from the East Mediterranean, but said he was ready to resume talks bound by international law to address their contested maritime claims in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean. By his recent rhetorical standards, the speech was one of Erdoğan’s mildest.

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We must increase lending to the world’s poorest countries now – or pay the price later

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Larger economies have been flexible and creative coping with Covid’s impact – the same mindset needs to be applied to helping poorer countries

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts Africa will suffer its worst recession since the 1970s. For the first time since the 1990s, extreme poverty will increase. The annual death toll from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria is set to double. We also fear a near doubling in the number of people facing starvation. Many girls out of school will never go back. Life expectancy will fall.

All this will fuel grievances, and in their wake conflict, instability and refugee flows, all giving succour to extremist groups and terrorists. The consequences will reach far and last long. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and G20 nations will feel the blowback just as some start to see light at the end of the Covid tunnel.

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Why the UN’s 75th general assembly could be worse than the world’s worst Zoom meeting

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The worst parts of UN events will be on display, the endless speechifying first among them, but none of what normally makes the general assembly indispensable

It has been billed as the world’s worst Zoom meeting, but the United Nations’ 75th general assembly could be even worse than that.

It is called the “general debate” but, unlike a Zoom meeting, there will be no discussion – just a week-long procession of pre-recorded video messages from the world’s leaders, stating their positions, very much with their domestic audience in mind. They were supposed to have sent their videos at the end of last week. As of Monday, only half had been turned in.

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‘Landmark moment’: 156 countries agree to Covid vaccine allocation deal

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Covax plan will counter rising threat of ‘vaccine nationalism’, prioritising vulnerable healthcare systems and frontline workers

A coalition of 156 countries has agreed a “landmark” deal to enable the rapid and equitable global distribution of any new coronavirus vaccines to 3% of participating countries’ populations, to protect vulnerable healthcare systems, frontline health workers and those in social care settings.

The Covid-19 vaccine allocation plan – co-led by the World Health Organization and known as Covax – has been set up to ensure that the research, purchase and distribution of any new vaccine is shared equally between the world’s richest countries and those in the developing world.

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Children urged to strike against lack of action on climate emergency

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Schoolchildren to protest on Friday in first such action since coronavirus pandemic struck

Schoolchildren around the world are being urged to go on strike to protest against a lack of action on the climate crisis.

Children and their supporters are invited to take to the streets on Friday, if it is safe to do so, or to go online with their protests “in whatever way suits you best”, according to the organisers.

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My country may be swept away by the climate crisis if the rest of the world fails to uphold its promises | President David Kabua

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Now is a time for courage. It will take sacrifices from everyone for us all to survive, the president of the Marshall Islands writes

My country joined the United Nations nearly 30 years ago, in September 1991. But unless my fellow member states take action, we may also be forced from it: the first country to see our land swept away by climate change.

As the UN general assembly meets in New York, celebrating the 75th anniversary of its formation, we must ask: how many of the 193 nations that it brings together will survive to reach its centenary?

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Iran sanctions: UN secretary general says ‘uncertainty’ over US snapback means he cannot act

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Antonio Guterres tells security council that it is ‘not clear’ whether US reimposition of sanctions on Tehran applies

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has told the security council he cannot take any action on a US declaration that all UN sanctions on Iran had been reimposed because “there would appear to be uncertainty” on the issue.

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said last month that he had triggered a 30-day process at the council that would lead to the return of UN sanctions on Iran on Saturday evening. He would also stop a conventional arms embargo on Tehran from expiring on 18 October.

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Looking for a Saturday night film? Instead of Notting Hill try Nations United | Richard Curtis

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In 2015, 193 countries agreed a blueprint for a better planet. 2020 was supposed to be a Super Year of progress – we can’t let the pandemic knock us off course

I’m aware this is a strange article to be writing. As most people struggle with the day-to-day complexity of life under the pandemic, how we do find the headspace to think about something as global as the sustainable development goals? But I’m inspired by a recent article by the activist and author Arundhati Roy. “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next,” she wrote.

And for me, the roadmap on this journey comes from the global goals – the superdetailed blueprint, agreed by 193 countries in 2015, for transformation for people and planet by 2030.

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