The United Nations Security Council looks set to fail another
critical test: whether it has the will to protect civilians in
Darfur from being slaughtered by their own government (AC Vol
45 No 17). Forty days after the Council gave Sudan's National
Is...
The election of Angola's Dr. Luís Gomes Sambo
as Africa Director of the United Nations' World Health Organisation,
with 32 votes to seven for Burundi's Déogratias
Barakamfitiye, showed African reluctance to yield to the United
States, wh...
News that a complaint of sexual harassment against the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, has been
dismissed has emerged as oddly as the story of the complaint itself.
With perhaps 1,000 people now dying every day in Darfur, Khartoum is still defying even the mild demands made last week by Colin Powell and Kofi Annan. The United States Secretary of State and the United Nations Secretary General (in close touch for week...
The international community seems powerless to prevent the steady worsening of the crisis (AC Vol 45 No 11). A United Nations Security Council mission arrived on 22 June and the UN threatens a travel ban on figures in Laurent Gbagbo's inner circle, though...
There is growing acrimony over the management of the United Nations peacekeeping operations in Africa. The test case is Congo-Kinshasa where UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy Namanga Ngongi leaves at the end of this month. He was much critic...
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has given the National Islamic Front government a free hand to pursue its policy of human rights violations. By refusing to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Sudan (first appointe...
'Don't you know what they've done in Burundi? They have burnt down the bridges of tomorrow.' Ethiopia, Liberia, Somalia... The litany is long. 'Freedom Soldiers' is the song; 'Building Bridges' is the album. The singers are all refugees from the bridge-bu...
The United Nations' latest exercise in naming and shaming sanctions-busters may see the international isolation of Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaoré and Togo's President Gnassingbé Eyadéma.
Weak mandates and lack of resources have hobbled UN operations
- new missions in Congo and Sierra Leone face the same constraints
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