U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, conscious of the stark ineffectiveness of the Security Council over the upheaval in Ukraine, is engaged in a round of shuttle diplomacy with Russian and Ukrainian leaders to help resolve the crisis in that region.
As the protracted Syrian conflict enters its fourth year, there seems to be little or no hope of a resolution to the devastating crisis.
The largest annual gathering with special focus on issues which impact on women and thereby humanity as a whole is now taking place in New York.
When the crisis in Ukraine moved into the august chambers of the Security Council last week, it was virtually dead on arrival.
Budget constraints in Washington and obstinacy at the highest levels of the African Union (AU) have combined to dangerously delay a possible U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR), according to sources close to negotiations currently underway in New York.
An inflow of Russian-made weapons. Political and military support from Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Sharp dissension among fractious rebel groups. And the unyielding loyalty of the armed forces.
France has said it will circulate a Security Council draft resolution Monday night that would create a U.N. peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic, as violence in its former colony threatens to morph into an ethnic conflict.
New and unexpected strains in Washington’s ties with two of its closest Middle Eastern allies -- Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- have underlined the difficult challenges the administration of President Barack Obama faces in navigating its way in the region’s increasingly treacherous and turbulent waters.
When Saudi Arabia sought the presidency of the General Assembly in a bid for U.N. glory back in 1991, the oil-rich kingdom was facing Papua New Guinea in a race to head the highest policy-making body in the organisation.
After an intense investigation of the military attack on civilians in Syria last month, a U.N. team of arms inspectors has reached a predictable conclusion: the deadly attack had all the trappings of the widespread use of chemical weapons.
President Barack Obama’s decision to put off a vote by Congress on the use of military force against Syria in order to pursue a Russian proposal to place Damascus’ chemical-weapons arsenal under international control has evoked both cheers and jeers from across the political spectrum here Wednesday.
If Syria eventually agrees to relinquish its stockpile of chemical arms under the 1993 international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), what of the six other countries that have either shown reluctance or refused to join the treaty?
The United Nations, which has remained deadlocked over Syria, is in danger of being craftily exploited to justify the impending air strike on Damascus.
World leaders from G20 are meeting in St Petersburg, Russia, amid sharp differences over possible U.S. military action against Syria in response to what the U.S. administration calls a deadly chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government.
When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was South Korea's foreign minister during 2004-2006, his answers to reporters were so predictably evasive the press corps in Seoul affectionately dubbed him "the slippery eel".
What seemed inevitable just 48 hours ago – an imminent U.S. missile attack on Syrian targets in response to an alleged chemical attack that reportedly killed hundreds of Syrian citizens – stalled Thursday as the justification for military action faced increasing questioning both here and abroad.
The United States, Britain and France, three veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, are making a strong push for an "urgent" U.N. investigation of the alleged use of chemical weapons Wednesday in Syria.
Syrian activists claim that government forces have carried out a "poisonous gas" attack in suburbs of the capital, Damascus, leaving hundreds of people dead.
When the Cold War peaked in the late 1960s and '70s, the United States and the then-Soviet Union were armed with one of the most effective non-lethal weapons in their diplomatic arsenal: a veto in the U.N.'s most powerful body, the Security Council.
The growing political rift between the United States and Russia triggered by the granting of temporary asylum to U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is now holed up in Moscow, is threatening to further undermine relations between the two superpowers at the United Nations.
Last year, as rebels captured the main towns in Northern Mali, UN Women registered a sudden and dramatic increase of rapes in the first week of the takeover of Gao and Kidal, in places where most women never report this violence to anyone, not even health practitioners.