John Kerry gave a major address on Afghanistan at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. today. The top head line is certainly to be that Kerry opposes sending 40,000 new troops to Afghanistan as was requested by General Stanley McChrystal. He favors, instead, a more narrow focus on training local Afghan military and police to strengthen the capacity of the Afghan government.
The UN Refugee Agency set out guidlines last April which advised that asylum seekers from central Iraq be considered in need of international protection due to the human rights and security situation in central Iraq. Not all governments, however, are taking heed. From the UN Refugee Agency:
In this edition of UN Plaza, I speak with Sam Bell of the Genocide Intervention Network about the administration's newly released Sudan policy review.
Among the many benefits the United Nations confers upon its members is something that international relations scholars call "lowering transaction costs." In other words, international institutions like the UN streamline international cooperation by offering standard procedures by which individuals and countries can interact. For example, the fact that we have a World Health Organization makes it easier to coordinate a global response to the H1N1 outbreak than if the WHO did not exist.
UN Foundation chief Tim Wirth cuts a video for the UK foreign office 100 Voices in a 100 days campaign.