The U.S. State Department published its annual report on global human rights abuses on Wednesday, spotlighting China’s mass detention of Uighur Muslims in the rollout. The head of the State Department human rights bureau compared China’s actions to the horrors of Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Furious Chinese officials responded by accusing the United States of “prejudice” and a “Cold War mentality.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is heading for Washington and talks on the organization’s peacekeeping budget. His aim is to secure additional funding after the United States capped its share and threw responsibility back on the rest of the world to step up and fill the void.
The head of the U.N. panel monitoring sanctions against North Korea says the fact that the only thing Kim Jong Un asked for at the Hanoi summit was to have sanctions lifted shows they are biting — despite his increasingly sophisticated efforts to evade the tough measures.
U.N. experts say they are investigating possible violations of sanctions on North Korea in about 20 countries, from alleged clandestine nuclear procurement in China to arms brokering in Syria and military cooperation with Iran, Libya and Sudan.
The U.N. Security Council will receive a report this week outlining North Korea’s remarkable success at evading sanctions against its nuclear missile program. According to the report, Pyongyang has been able to import petroleum, export coal, and sell weapons in spite of the toughest sanctions ever imposed against it.
The U.S. military steadily ramped up airstrikes against the Somalian terrorist group al-Shabaab over the past year, shifting its focus away from the dying Islamic State to al-Qaeda’s most feral ally with relatively little media attention.
Actress-turned-feminist activist Emma Watson celebrated International Women’s Day Friday by praising women who are “resisting” and “protesting.”
Kuwait’s U.N. ambassador says an “overwhelming” number of Security Council members oppose Israel’s decision to deduct money that Palestinians transfer to the families of people killed, injured or imprisoned for attacks on Israel from their monthly tax revenue.
Pope Francis urged Catholics to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Friday, asserting that they are “supported by our deepest religious and ethical values.”
The Vatican is urging world religions to throw their collective moral weight behind the United Nations’ “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs), which mandate climate action and gender equality.