Stories written by Thalif Deen
Thalif Deen, Senior Editor & Director, UN Bureau, Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency has been covering the United Nations since the late 1970s. Beginning with the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, he has covered virtually every major U.N. conference: on population, human rights, the environment, sustainable development, food security, humanitarian aid, arms control and nuclear disarmament.
As the former UN Bureau Chief for IPS, he was cited twice for excellence in U.N. reporting at the annual awards presentation of the U.N. Correspondents' Association (UNCA). In November 2012, he was on the IPS team which won the prestigious gold medal for reporting on the global environment-- and in 2013, he shared the gold, this time with the UN Bureau Chief of Reuters news agency, for his reporting on the humanitarian and development work of the United Nations.
A former information officer at the U.N. Secretariat, he served twice as a member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the UN General Assembly sessions. His track record includes a stint as deputy news editor of the Sri Lanka Daily News and senior editorial writer on the Hong Kong Standard. As military analyst, he was also Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; and military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group. He was a longstanding columnist for the Sri Lanka Sunday Times, U.N. correspondent for Asiaweek, Hong Kong and Jane's Defence Weekly, London. A Fulbright scholar with a Master’s Degree (MSc) in Journalism from Columbia University, New York, he is co-author of the 1981 book on “How to Survive a Nuclear Disaster” and author of the 2021 book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote me on That”— and subtitled ‘from the Sublime to the Hilarious’, both of which are available on Amazon
The killings of thousands of civilians in the ongoing Middle East conflict are largely the result of an uneven battle—a nuclear-armed Israel, equipped with some of the most sophisticated American weapons systems, fighting a rag-tag militant group, Hamas.
Last August, 91 UN member states, “in a demonstration of solidarity and commitment”, signed a U.S.-Led Joint Communiqué condemning the Use of Food as a Weapon of War.
Roughly 345 million people – in 79 countries – face acute food insecurity, often caused or exacerbated by armed conflicts, the US said, pointing out that the joint communiqué was born out of the United States’ resolve to once again use its UN Security Council presidency to draw attention to conflict-induced food insecurity.
The UN agency, which advocates women’s rights and gender empowerment, has predicted that gender equality is “300 years away.”
Addressing the UN Commission on the Status of Women last March, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres not only quoted the estimates provided by UN Women but also warned that progress toward gender equality is “vanishing before our eyes.”
The widespread use of American weapons by Israel, which has killed thousands of civilians in Gaza, has triggered accusations of war crimes against the United States.
But US has always escaped these charges in contemporary military conflicts –particularly in the killing fields of Afghanistan and Iraq --and also in the use of American weapons in Yemen where thousands have been killed.
When the United Nations commemorated the 75th anniversary of the UN Charter back in 2020, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres paid a supreme compliment to Civil Society Organizations (CSOs).
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are returning to Africa, for the first time in decades, with the “same old failed message”.
“Cut your spending, sack public service workers, and pay your debts-- despite the huge human costs,” says Oxfam International’s interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar, following the release of new Oxfam report.
The UN’s high-level appointments have mostly been on the basis of “equitable geographical rotation”—with Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean taking turns.
When the UN’s 193 member states reviewed the current status of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030, the verdict was mostly failures—and with little or no successes.
The hunger/poverty nexus was best characterized by Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), who warned last week that under current trends, 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030—and as many people suffering from hunger by 2030 as in 2015 (600 million people).
Politically, the United Nations has largely been described as a monumental failure ---with little or no progress in resolving some of the world’s past and ongoing military conflicts and civil wars, including Palestine, Western Sahara, Kashmir, and more recently, Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan and Myanmar, among others.
The recent epidemic of coups in Africa -- including military take-overs in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon-- have triggered the inevitable question: Is multi-party democracy on the retreat?
The Open Society Barometer, an annual global survey from Open Society Foundations, launched September 12, reflects the positive and negative aspects of the state democracy worldwide.
Everyone in this world is entitled to 15 minutes of fame-- is a legendary quote mis-attributed to the American pop icon Andy Warhol.
Over the years, the United Nations has laid down its own 15-minute rule for world leaders addressing the UN General Assembly.
When 150+ world leaders, including Presidents and Prime Ministers, arrive in New York to address the high-level segment of the General Assembly beginning September 19, the UN neighborhood will be turned into a veritable war zone.
The streets will be littered with scores of police officers, US secret service personnel, UN security officers, bomb-sniffing dogs, road closures-- and a stand-by ambulance in the UN campus ready to cope with any medical emergencies.
The United Nations will host six “high-level” meetings, including two summits of world leaders-- over a short span of five consecutive days, beginning September 18.
The back-to-back meetings, described as unprecedented, includes the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit on September 18-19; a high-level dialogue on Financing for Development (FfD) on September 20; and a ministerial meeting of the Summit of the Future on September 21 (with the summit itself scheduled to take place September 2024).
A coalition of civil society organizations, (CSOs), including climate activists, anti-poverty campaigners and celebrity chefs, are among those calling for an emergency meeting of world leaders on the global food crisis during the UN General Assembly (UNGA) sessions in New York next month.
The artificial intelligence (AI) platform ChatGPT, whose negative consequences include misinformation, is facing new charges of political bias.
According to a study by the University of East Anglia (UEA), released August 17, AI ChatGPT shows “a significant and systemic left-wing bias”.
Going back to the 16th century and continuing through the late 1960s, France was described as the world’s second largest colonial power—just behind the British Empire.
As the old saying goes: The sun would never set over the British Empire because God wouldn’t trust an Englishman in the dark. But would that also apply to the French colonial empire?
A rash of military coups in African countries -- including Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea, Mali, and most recently Niger-- has raised a legitimate question: What should be the response of the United Nations, a world body that swears by multi-party democracy, on army take-overs?
Condemnation? Yes.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the creature of—and subservient to -- the 193 member states who largely reign supreme in the world body.
But, in reality, Antonio Guterres has been defiant and openly challenged one of the five permanent members of the Security Council lambasting Russia for its 17-month-old invasion of Ukraine.
Just after a band of mercenaries tried to oust the government in the Maldives back in 1988, I asked a Maldivian diplomat, using a familiar military catch phrase, about the strength of his country's “standing army.”
"Standing army?", the diplomat asked with mock surprise, and remarked perhaps half-jokingly, "We don't even have a sitting army."
When President Ferdinand Marcos was running an authoritarian regime in the Philippines (1965-1986), he was once asked about rumors of rigged elections in his country.
“I promised I will give you the right to vote,” he said, according to a joke circulating at that time, “But I did not say anything about counting those votes”
When the United Nations commemorated ‘International Day of Women in Diplomacy’ last week, the President of the General Assembly (PGA) Csaba Kőrösi rightly pointed out the woeful absence of women to hold that position in the UN hierarchy.
“Women have played a central role in the history of the United Nations ever since the signing of the UN Charter,” he said, “but out of the 78 people elected to my role, President of the General Assembly, only four have been women.”