Hillary Clinton delivered a sweeping speech on American global leadership earlier today at the Council on Foreign Relations. There is a lot of love for the UN in there. The following excerpt appeared under the sub-heading: "Global Institutions for the 21st Century."
Effective institutions are just as crucial at a global level, where the challenges are even more complex and the partners even more diverse.
The biggest screen in Times Square is playing PSA's on the Millennium Development goals between now and the UN Summit in two weeks. Our friends at the UN Foundation pass along this announcement.
UN Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie is in Pakistan. And good for her. This calamity really needs to stay in the headlines.
Ever since the United States submitted its first Universal Periodic Review report to the UN Human Rights Council a meme has been percolating, mostly on the right, that the Obama administration is trying to use the UN to undermine Arizona's controversial law that allows it to detain suspected illegal immigrants. We can thank Arizona governor Jan Brewer for this--she sent an angry letter to Secretary Clinton,
Over at Wired, Spencer Ackerman points to a WSJ report that the Pentagon is contemplating a five year, $1.4 billion military aid package to Yemen. That would be on top of a $155 million military aid package Yemen received earlier in the year, which, according to Ackerman includes such goodies as: The big news out the UN today is that top UN Human rights official Navi Pillay announced she will delay the release of a controversial report about Rwanda's actions in the Congo (then Zaire) from 1993 to 2003. The so-called Mapping Report is an attempt to document alleged atrocities that occurred during the DRC's long civil war, of which DRC's neighbors played a lead role. The UN Refugee Agency's most famous spokesperson asks the international community to do more to help in Pakistan. Angelina Jolie says, "this is not just a humanitarian crisis. When a disaster like the Pakistan floods strike, one of the most urgent priorities is making sure that all of the aid agencies responding to the disaster can coordinate their relief activities on the ground. At the most basic level, this means that they have to be able to talk to call each other and send emails. The problem is, disasters can easily wipe out the means of communication. Richard Branson's Virgin Unite philanthropy has organized an online fund raising drive for Pakistan flood relief. There is some good, substantive discussion about Pakistan and humanitarian relief interspersed with performances from well-known artists. Here's the announcement:
