We cover a lot of ground in this week’s episode. Just hours before we recorded our conversation, the ICC issued formal arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Anjali Dayal and Mark Leon Goldberg explain what this means for the UN. We then travel to Baku for an update on COP29 before heading back to UN headquarters to discuss the latest US veto of a Gaza ceasefire resolution. Finally, we check in on the new […] The post What’s the Relation...| UN Dispatch
Donald Trump has appointed New York Representative Elise Stefanik as his incoming Ambassador to the UN. Once widely seen as a rising Republican star, Stefanik at the time became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at the age of 30, ten years ago. Back then, she championed a more conventional brand of GOP moderation. In 2016, she issued strong denunciations of Donald Trump but has since become one of his most loyal and ardent supporters. Following Trump’s consolidation of […]| UN Dispatch
Listen to podcasts and read articles about global news and the United Nations, initiatives, geopolitics, SDGs and the pressing issues facing the world today.| UN Dispatch
I’ll cut to the chase: Because of some funding decisions out of our control, UN Dispatch is pivoting to a crowdfunding model. We are moving to Substack and I need your help to keep our coverage of the United Nations alive and thriving. To that end, we are running a massive promotion. Use this button to unlock a 40% discount to receive our dedicated coverage of the United Nations. When I started my career as a journalist covering the UN […]| UN Dispatch
The UN General Assembly met this morning to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Under normal circumstances, Europe and the United States would join forces to advance a resolution that firmly denounces Russia’s aggression and forcefully defends Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. But today’s vote was anything but normal. There were essentially two competing texts—one drafted by the European Union and Ukraine, and the other by the United...| UN Dispatch
It’s official. The United States is seeking to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO). Though this move had been rumored for a while, it was never abundantly clear that the Trump administration would actually move forward with it, especially on day one. To be sure, Trump tried to pull out of the WHO back in 2020. However, that decision at the time reflected the politics of the moment: Trump very transparently sought to shift blame for his own incompetent […]| UN Dispatch
A new year. A new United Nations. In our 2025 debut episode of To Save Us From Hell, Anjali Dayal and I discuss what to expect in the year ahead at the United Nations. We cover a lot of ground, including: Five members of the Security Council rotating off and five new ones rotating in. How will the new composition of the Security Council shape its work in the coming year, and who are the key new Security Council members to watch? […]| UN Dispatch
It’s a new day in Damascus. But what about New York? For the last 14 years, the United Nations’ role in Syria has been relegated to the circumscribed (but vital) task of supporting the humanitarian needs of millions of Syrians. Now, there is an opportunity for the UN and the broader international community to support Syria’s political transition, post-conflict recovery, and reconstruction. These are areas in which the United Nations, in other contexts, has established a decent track rec...| UN Dispatch
When the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, it had all the makings of a monumental catastrophe. The Secretary-General at the time, Ban Ki-moon, was not the same kind of jet-setting international peace negotiator as his predecessor, Kofi Annan. So Ban made a wise decision: he tapped the former Secretary-General to be his special envoy for Syria. At the time, Annan was riding high as an ex-diplomat, having successfully negotiated a political settlement to a deadly and high-stakes internal confli...| UN Dispatch
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released its annual assessment of global humanitarian needs today. It’s a grim document. The report, known as the Global Humanitarian Overview, surveys the dozens of man-made and natural disasters around which the UN has mounted a response over the current year. It also projects the crises expected to demand international attention in 2025. The report estimates that 305 million people across 32 countries and 9 r...| UN Dispatch
Listeners will no doubt remember the devastating Ebola outbreak of 2014–2016. More than 28,600 people were infected, and 11,325 people died across several countries in West Africa. One of the hardest-hit places was Sierra Leone, where nearly 4,000 people lost their lives. In the years since, scientists and civil society advocates have raced to develop and implement a vaccine to protect against future outbreaks. That vaccine works—and works well. It was tested during outbreaks in the Democ...| UN Dispatch