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United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Credit: UN Photo/John Isaac. Geneva, Switzerland, May 23, 2014 / 01:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A U.N. anti-torture committee report has said that the Holy See did not violate the international Convention Against Torture. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the apostolic nuncio leading the Holy See’s permanent observer mission to the United Nations in Geneva, told Vatican Radio the committee’s observations are “an acknowledgement of the good faith efforts of the Holy See to comply (with) always and to advance the Convention Against Torture.” The U.N. Committee on the Convention Against Torture released an advanced unedited...

Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs defends Israel's investigative processes The head of a Canadian Jewish advocacy group is slamming the United Nations over its "knee-jerk" reaction to a video that human rights groups claim shows two unarmed Palestinian teenagers being shot by Israeli soldiers. "Frankly, Israel really doesn't need to take instructions from the UN about the proper followup to incidents involving fatalities," Shimon Fogel, head of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, told CBC News. "There's a long established process by which every such incident is thoroughly investigated by an arm's length body within the national policing...

Somalia could experience massive humanitarian crises against a backdrop of dwindling funds to support life-saving interventions, a senior UN relief official for Somalia said on Monday. Humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Philippe Lazzarini, told a news conference in Nairobi that Somalia risked drifting into a humanitarian crisis due to fragile food situation, a spike in diseases and insecurity. “The humanitarian needs in Somalia remain vast based on credible assessment on the ground. An estimated two million people are grappling with food stress, malnutrition and communicable diseases,” said Lazzarini. He warned that the humanitarian crises experienced in 2011 could repeat itself in...

The German Ministry of Environment has falsified the conclusions of a UN climate change report in the German-language version released last week, in an attempt to hide the fact that the country's 'green policies' are useless. The ministry’s four-page summary of the report contains outright contradictions and falsifications of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendations, apparently made to hide UN criticism of the way the German government has turned emissions-trading into a cash cow for futile renewable energy projects. Die Welt said on Sunday that parts of the thousands of pages-long English-language report which the ministry found embarrassing were...

(Reuters) - United Nations peacekeeping missions routinely avoid using force to protect civilians who are under attack, intervening in only 20 percent of cases despite being authorized to do so by the U.N. Security Council, an internal U.N. study found. "There is a persistent pattern of peacekeeping operations not intervening with force when civilians are under attack," the report by the Office of Internal Oversight Services said. "Peacekeepers are absent from many locations when civilians come under attack, and when they are present, are unable or unwilling to prevent serious physical harm from being inflicted," the 26-page report said. :snip:...

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen believes that no one will longer believe Russian guarantees of security. He said about this on a press conference in Bucharest, where he arrived to commemorate an anniversary of Romania’s accession to the Alliance, reports Radio Svoboda. The Head of NATO stated that in 1994, where an international agreement was reached about the non-nuclear status of Ukraine, Russia as one of the participant of the agreement pledged to support Ukrainian sovereignty. However, after the annexation of the Crimea, according to Rasmussen, there is no longer possibility to trust Moscow’s guarantees. In Bucharest Rasmussen had negotiations...

Israel has launched a campaign calling for the United Nations to recognize Judaism’s holiest day, Yom Kippur, as an official holiday. Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor sent a letter to all U.N. member states, saying there are three major monotheistic religions, but only two—Christianity and Islam—are recognized by the U.N. calendar. “Such discrimination at the U.N. must end,” Prosor said in an excerpt of the letter sent to journalists Friday by Israel’s U.N. Mission. …

Palestinians marched in the West Bank and Gaza on Thursday to commemorate their displacement in the 1948 Mideast war that followed the establishment of the state of Israel. Sirens wailed at noon in Ramallah and elsewhere across the West Bank for 66 seconds to symbolize the number of years since the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe” in Arabic—the term Palestinians use to describe their defeat and displacement in the war. Israel overcame the armies of surrounding Arab states as well as local Arabs who attacked after the Jewish state was declared on May 15, 1948. […] “It is time for the leaders...

The United Nations Environment Program aims to dramatically increase its role in running the world according to nebulous environmental principles, according to a strategic plan that will be presented to the U.N. General Assembly this fall. The principal objective of the plan is to “catalyze a transition” to a radical new global green economy, based on “low-carbon, low-emission, resource-efficient and equitable development”—a theme that will dominate the opening of the General Assembly in September, and culminate in yet another U.N.-sponsored summit of world leaders a year later, to endorse what the organization calls its “post-2015 development agenda.”

Footage has emerged of a white Mil Mi-24 helicopter allegedly being used in Ukraine's antiterror operation against pro-Russian separatists near the Donetsk Oblast city of Kramatorsk. Three further combat Mi-24 helicopters and one transport Mi-8 helicopter bearing the UN logo were spotted in the region by the Russian news outlet Life News. The UN has distanced itself from the footage below [video at URL], stating that, as Ukraine is a contributor to the organisation's forces, it must remove any UN insignia when the materials are returned. A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon said that any use of peacekeeping equipment,...

Last week, questioners on United Nations Committee Against Torture called pro-life speech “torture.” This move is part of a broader push by the radical abortion lobby to essentially criminalize the pro-life movement. The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) – an extremist international abortion syndicate that is spearheading the anti-life push – sent a letter last month to the U.N. body on torture claiming that Church leaders in the pro-life movement have “perpetuated torture” by taking a stand against abortion.

In a hearing before the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) , the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) argued that the Catholic Church’s campaign against abortion is tantamount to mental torture. In testimony before the UNCAT, CRR Vice Chairperson Felice Gaer maintained that “the Church’s uncompromising opposition to abortion is out-of-step with the values shared by all progressive nations. By characterizing abortion as the taking of a human life they are, in effect, accusing every woman who has an abortion of murdering her own child. This type of mental abuse is among the list of tortures this Committee has the...

The Center for Reproductive Rights, a non-governmental organization that advocates for legalized abortion, is urging the United Nations Committee Against Torture to tell the Catholic Church that “the freedom of speech and of religion” do not give the church the right to advocate against abortion. When the committee met in Geneva on Monday for a hearing on the Vatican’s compliance with the Convention Against Torture, Vice Chairperson Felice Gaer, an American, said in her opening statement that laws that ban all abortion—which is the position of the Catholic Church—may violate the convention. She also repeated verbatim some language that had...

Vatican officials are blasting the Untied Nations after a UN panel made wild-eyed claims that the Catholic Church’s pro-life teachings “promote torture.” The UN panel is expected to release its report on the Catholic Church at the end of the month.As international pro-life leader Austin Ruse writes as Breitbart: Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told committee members, “The Holy See condemns the torture of anyone, including those tortured and killed before they are born.” This was a pointed comment to a committee manned largely by outspoken abortion advocates.“Late-term abortion constitutes torture,” he said to Felice Gaer, an American and vice-chairman of the...

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - The Holy See has responsibility for the Vatican City State. It "has no jurisdiction [. . .] over every member of the Catholic Church", but it does "foster [in each of them] an interior conversion of hearts to love God and one's neighbour." In view of this, notwithstanding their affiliation with any Catholic institution, individuals are "subject to a particular State authority. [And] The obligation and responsibility of promoting justice in these cases resides with the competent domestic jurisdiction." In presenting the Initial Periodic Report of the Holy See to the Committee on the Convention against...

In March 2011, Reuters announced a secret order signed by Barack Obama to provide covert support for Libyan rebel forces. The operation became known as Zero Footprint, but after Obama finished with it, Big Foot was identified. For about 18 months before the attacks on our Benghazi Special Mission, intelligence had successfully identified terrorist factions inside the rebel factions. Those terrorists included the Muslim Brotherhood as well as al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, Senator John McCain said the rebels were his heroes. Qadhafi made a fatal mistake, literally, by working toward one currency for Africa, which threatened the West. The idea of a...

The Vatican attempted to minimize its culpability over the Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse scandal as a UN committee on torture grilled the institution over it alleged “climate of impunity” which has prevailed for decades. In a two-hour hearing in Geneva, the Committee Against Torture was unrelenting in its questioning of the Vatican delegation, asking about past policy decisions, the juridical distinction between the Holy See and Vatican City, and information on specific cases, Reuters reports. The Vatican, which is set to issue a formal answer on Tuesday, said the church has been cleaning house for the past decade and...

DENVER — Behind the hoopla surrounding Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the Bureau of Land Management is a growing resentment over the federal government’s status as the largest landowner in the West. “This is so much bigger than one rancher in Nevada,” Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, who heads the American Lands Council, said in an April 23 online debate sponsored by The Salt Lake Tribune. How much land does the federal government own? A 2012 Congressional Research Survey said the federal government owns about 640 million acres, or 28 percent of the nation’s land mass. Roughly 90 percent...

Raising a worldwide alarm, the World Health Organization announced Monday that spread of polio is an international public health emergency that could grow in the next few months and unravel the nearly three-decade effort to eradicate the crippling disease. […] Polio usually strikes children under five and is most often spread via infected water. There is no specific cure, but several vaccines exist. Experts are particularly concerned that the virus continues to pop up in countries that were previously free of the disease, such as Syria, Somalia and Iraq—where civil war or unrest complicates efforts to contain the virus. That...

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis plans to address all the heads of United Nations agencies on May 10 in what some are viewing as a crucial opportunity to help turn the U.N.’s satellite institutions away from their radical anti-life agenda.He is also scheduled to meet U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon next week. The meeting would be the Pope’s second with the U.N. leader since his election.The U.N. System Chief Executives Board for Coordination — the longest-standing and highest-level coordination forum of the U.N. — will be received in private audience by the Holy Father at the end of its...