Diplomacy & Crisis News

The tenuous situation in eastern Ukraine continues to be marked by sporadic fighting and a crippling humanitarian crisis forcing many civilians to seek refuge in underground shelters or in neighbouring countries, the United Nations relief arm confirmed today.

Aiming to target 5.7 million children under the age of five, the United Nations today launched a mass polio vaccination campaign in Iraq, which is set to be conducted in all governorates to maintain the country's polio-free status.

After a year in office, Modi’s gestures of conciliation toward Islamabad have gone nowhere. That’s because India’s founding fathers set Pakistan up to fail.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has requested that his Special Envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, postpone the planned consultations aimed at seeking a peaceful and Yemeni-led political transition process in the country, according to a United Nations spokesperson.

Gerard Araud, the French ambassador the United States, says an emerging nuclear deal with Iran will impose tough restrictions on the Islamic Republic and improve regional security across the Middle East. But on Tuesday, Araud acknowledged that it could also pose a potential risk: spurring an array Arab countries to develop their own civilian nuclear programs.

Burma may be getting closer to ending its 60-year-old civil war. But there's still a long way to go.

Following an agreement between the Nicaraguan government and shadowy Chinese billionaire Wang Jing, there may be a new canal in the Western Hemisphere. The possibility of a transoceanic canal through Nicaragua has been discussed for almost 400 years. Nicaragua was almost the place for the U.S.-built canal until, for a number of reasons, Panama became more ...

The top United Nations human rights official drew attention to several issues of concern today in an informal address to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council from the eruption of violence in Burundi and the overflowing migrant dilemmas in the Mediterranean and South-East Asia, to the protracted and worsening conflict in South Sudan.

As teams of trekkers and Nepalese sherpas are now reaching remote, high-altitude villages with humanitarian aid, a senior United Nations development official today drew attention to the post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction needs of more than 500,000 homes and cultural heritage sites in the rural areas.

The Syrian government's efforts to suppress the rebellion against it have been described as war crimes.

Their main complaint: Swiss-born Blatter’s support for Russia’s hosting of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, “despite Russia’s ongoing violations of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”

Shiite militias and Iraqi government forces have started to move into place around the Islamic State-held city of Ramadi in preparation for a highly-publicized but hastily-planned push to wrest the city from the fighters who chased the Iraqi army out earlier this month. U.S. military officials believe that the militants had been carefully planning the ...

The Security Council today adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) as the Horn of Africa country continues down its road towards political recovery and increased security.

Northeast Nigeria has witnessed a sharp increase in suicide attacks involving women and girls this year, the United Nations children’s agency warned today, calling on the country’s incoming Government make the safety and well-being of children a political priority.

Travelling around South Sudan to see efforts made by the United Nations to protect civilians in the country, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, Ellen Margrethe Løj, who also heads the UN Mission (UNMISS), visited Bentiu in Unity state this weekend.

Amid a range of structural challenges, including high unemployment and poverty, Serbia is now also facing a housing crisis which demands an immediate Government response, according to a United Nations independent human rights expert.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has called for humanitarian pauses in Syria so farmers can safely harvest and transport crops within the country to reach all Syrians in need.

As he wrapped up a visit to Ireland today, the Secretary-General congratulated the country on its “fruitful and strong” relationship with the United Nations over the past 60 years and looked forward to a continued partnership as the world tackled several significant challenges.

The government says it’s taking “incremental” steps toward reform, but the plan to reshape payouts for the poor is nothing short of a revolution.

A farmer in Patiala, India shows damage to wheat caused by unseasonably heavy rains in April 2015. While India and Pakistan don’t see eye to eye on pretty much anything, climate change dangers may help finally bring them together. Photo: Getty Images via aljazeera.com

Relations between India and Pakistan have been notoriously frosty for decades. But the two long-time adversaries will soon need to work together to effectively combat literal frost: in other words the effects of climate change.

Neil Bhatiya, a policy associate at the Century Foundation, reports that monsoon-level rains pounded Pakistan this past April — much earlier than expected — and resulted in at least 37 deaths. At the same time, unusually heavy spring rain also decimated wheat crops in India. Farming remains critically important to both countries’ economies: The World Bank estimates that about 47 percent of India’s, and 45 percent of Pakistan’s, workforce is employed in the agriculture and rural development sector.

In addition to impacts on the economy, both Mumbai and Karachi are susceptible to problems caused by rising sea levels. Just this week India suffered a debilitating heat wave that killed over 500 people. If these recent extremes are signs of things to come — and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a higher rate of severe weather events in the next century — India and Pakistan could face significant environmental, economic and societal upheaval.

The situation may not be not as grim as it seems. Cooperation has already taken place between the two neighboring countries on the the Indus Waters Treaty, a scheme to share river resources that has been in place since the 1960s. Leadership in India and Pakistan have made some progress in developing renewable energy sources, notably solar.

Thus far these efforts have been pursued separately. India and Pakistan must somehow find a way to pool their ideas and initiatives. If they can, as Bhatiya writes, such interaction could “serve as confidence building measures for climate change cooperation an important cornerstone of the bilateral relationship, to the benefit of the region as a whole.”

Enemies for so long, India are linked by their geography and potential to be devastated by climate change. If anything could bring them together, it should be this.