Tag: United Nations

  • We Have Here, in Africa, Everything Necessary to Become a Powerful, Modern, and Industrialised Continent

    We Have Here, in Africa, Everything Necessary to Become a Powerful, Modern, and Industrialised Continent

    Wu Fang (China), 行走 (‘Journey’), 2017. In his 1963 book, Africa Must Unite, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, wrote, ‘We have here, in Africa, everything necessary to become a powerful, modern, industrialised continent. United Nations investigators have recently shown that Africa, far from having inadequate resources, is probably better equipped for industrialisation than almost any […]

  • Shouldn’t the United Kingdom and France Relinquish Their Permanent Seats at the United Nations?

    Shouldn’t the United Kingdom and France Relinquish Their Permanent Seats at the United Nations?

    Dumile Feni (South Africa), Figure Studies, 1970. At its fifteenth summit in August 2023, the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) group adopted the Johannesburg II Declaration, which, amongst other issues, raised the question of reforming the United Nations, particularly its security council. To make the UN Security Council (UNSC) ‘more democratic, representative, effective, and efficient, and to […]

  • Global Leaders Plead for Peace in Ukraine at UN

    Global Leaders Plead for Peace in Ukraine at UN

    President Gustavo Petro Urrego of Colombia addresses the UN General Assembly. Photo credit: UN As it did last year, the 2023 United Nations General Assembly has been debating what role the United Nations and its members should play in the crisis in Ukraine. The United States and its allies still insist that the UN Charter […]

  • NATO Destroyed Libya in 2011; Storm Daniel Came to Sweep Up the Remains

    NATO Destroyed Libya in 2011; Storm Daniel Came to Sweep Up the Remains

    Shefa Salem al-Baraesi (Libya), Drown on Dry Land, 2019. Three days before the Abu Mansur and Al Bilad dams collapsed in Wadi Derna, Libya, on the night of September 10, the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi participated in a discussion at the Derna House of Culture about the neglect of basic infrastructure in his city. At the […]

  • Why the Media Aren’t Telling the Whole Story of Libya’s Floods

    Why the Media Aren’t Telling the Whole Story of Libya’s Floods

    The reality of the West’s trademark current foreign policy – marketed for the past two decades under the principle of a “Responsibility to Protect” – is all too visible amid Libya’s flood wreckage. Many thousands are dead or missing in the port of Derna after two dams protecting the city burst this week as they […]

  • There Are Enough Resources in the World to Fulfill Human Needs, But Not Enough Resources to Satisfy Capitalist Greed

    There Are Enough Resources in the World to Fulfill Human Needs, But Not Enough Resources to Satisfy Capitalist Greed

    Kurt Nahar (Suriname), Untitled 2369, 2008. On 20 July, the United Nations (UN) released a document called A New Agenda for Peace. In the opening section of the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres made some remarks that bear close reflection: We are now at an inflection point. The post-Cold War period is over. A transition […]

  • Let Them Eat Bugs: Challenging the WEF’s Corporate-Driven Food Reset

    The prevailing globalised agrifood model is built on unjust trade policies, the leveraging of sovereign debt, population displacement and land dispossession. It fuels commodity monocropping and food insecurity as well as soil and environmental degradation. It is responsible for increasing rates of illness, nutrient-deficient diets, a narrowing of the range of food crops, water shortages, […]

  • The World Needs a New Development Theory That Does Not Trap the Poor in Poverty

    The World Needs a New Development Theory That Does Not Trap the Poor in Poverty

    The Akosombo Dam in the Volta River, inaugurated in 1965 during Kwame Nkrumah’s presidency. In June, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network published its Sustainable Development Report 2023, which tracks the progress of the 193 member states towards attaining the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ‘From 2015 to 2019’, the network wrote, ‘the world […]

  • The Rice Bowl of the Chinese People Is Held Firmly in Their Hands

    The Rice Bowl of the Chinese People Is Held Firmly in Their Hands

    Fan Wennan (China), 中国 2098: 太阳照常升起 (‘China 2098: The Sun Rises Just the Same’), 2019–2022. At the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), member states decided to replace the Millennium Development Goals (established in 2000) with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The first SDG was to ‘end poverty in […]

  • There’s too much Canada, not too little 

    There’s too much Canada, not too little 

    A kid that already has handfuls of candies wants to take another whack at the piñata before others have had their first turn. That about sums up the foreign minister’s position on Canadian power in international affairs. Canada needs greater international influence, according to Melanie Joly. While the Foreign Affairs Minister’s recent comment elicited some […]

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