Kofi Annan’ s Climate Cocktail Dinatoire in Geneva
In case anyone’s lost track of Kofi Annan, it’s time for a reality check. During his final year as self-styled “Chief Diplomat of the World” at the UN, he...
Kofi Annan
Could Be the Best Reason Yet for a Military Strike on Iran
Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN’s IAEA, says if there’s a military strike on Iran, he’ll resign. On the road to a safer world, what a two-fer! According to...
Op-eds
Ban the Old Ways
We are about to learn the meaning of “ethics” in the United Nations administration of Ban Ki-moon. Eight months after Secretary-General Ban took office, promising to “restore tr...
Op-eds
Can the U.N’s Global Compact Initiative Teach Good Corporate Behavior?
Can the United Nations teach good corporate behavior? That’s the mission of a fast-growing UN initiative called the Global Compact – run out of the Secretary-General’s executive...
Op-eds
A Gathering of BMWs & Tyrannies
Geneva — So, how many BMWs does it take to make one United Nations Human Rights Council? Many — to judge by the scene I came across Monday evening in the parking lot of the U...
Op-eds
Crying Wolfowitz
For two of Paul Wolfowitz's most prominent critics, Mark Malloch Brown and Ad Melkert, the war over the World Bank presidency could not have come at a better time. Whatever else the ousting...
Op-eds
Call It the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Dictatorships
With Zimbabwe elected Friday to chair the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, we now have the latest poster-child for the usual U.N. Orwellian abuse of the noble mandate, glorio...
Op-eds
The Return of Moral Equivalence
“...the argument artfully directs attention away from an obvious evil—the catastrophic humanitarian disaster in Darfur...—in order to refocus it on a series of less obvious supp...
Op-eds
More Questions about the U.N. in North Korea
It’s bad enough that the United Nations Development Program office in North Korea has been handing over hard currency to the regime of Kim Jong Il. But a new twist now emerging in the Cash-...
Op-eds
At the United Nations, the Curious Career of Maurice Strong
Before the United Nations can save the planet, it needs to clean up its own house. And as scandal after scandal has unfolded over the past decade, from Oil for Food to procurement fraud to peacek...
Op-eds
Will the U.N. Development Program Probe Be Ban Ki-Moon’s First Cover-Up?
For just one day last week, it looked like Ban, in the first real test of his self-proclaimed mission to “restore trust” at the U.N., had risen above the bureaucratic evasions of his...
Op-eds
U.N.’s ‘Cash for Kim’ Scandal: Ban Should Look Next at North Korea, World Food Program
Bravo to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations for digging into the doings of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) in North Korea and uncovering streams of cash flowing via the UNDP to Kim Jong I...
Op-eds
UNder the Law
In what surely qualifies as the single-most-promising United Nations reform effort to date, federal prosecutors in New York, jointly with the New York District Attorney, have just announced the i...
Op-eds
Ban’s Burden
As the new secretary general of the UN, South Korea's Ban Ki-moon faces a choice: style himself as the next self-serving pop star of global diplomacy or dedicate himself more humbly and brav...
Op-eds
Is The Nation State Threatened?
“Is the Nation State Threatened?” This question, though apt, may fail to convey how dire the threat to sovereignty truly is. It might be better to ask, “Is the Nation Stat...
Op-eds
Mystery Surfaces Over Apartment of Kofi Annan
As Secretary-General Annan prepares to leave his post at the United Nations, a mystery is surfacing surrounding his apartment on Roosevelt Island, subsidized by New York taxpayers, which is still...
Op-eds
Tis the Season in Darfur
As much of the Western world busies itself with merriment in preparation for the celebrations of Chanukah and Christmas, the light is fading rapidly in the scarred vastness of Darfur. In the late...
Op-eds
Opportunity Lost
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivered his farewell speech Monday, squandering yet another opportunity to apologize for his failures and come clean about the U.N. Instead, he used...
Op-eds
Plunder Down Under
At United Nations headquarters, Secretary General Kofi Annan likes to imply that the Oil-for-Food era is over (“If there was a scandal” was his locution earlier this year). But Down U...
Op-eds
The UN’s Jew-Obsession
Every single day, hundreds of African tribesmen are killed in Darfur by militias acting with the blessing of Sudan's Arab Islamist government. Eac...