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Surprising photos of soldiers in Almaty wearing UN peacekeeping helmets spark a response from the United Nations. Images released by the Associated Press on January 8 show several soldiers in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, wearing helmets with "UN" stenciled on them in the unmistakable colors of United Nations peacekeeping forces. The photos, made by photographer Vladimir Tretyakov and shared by independent journalist Jake Hanrahan, have added to questions over what exactly is happening in the restive Central Asian country.

The United Nations may resort to military action against states that defy its mandates on global climate action, according to Ole Wæver, a prominent international relations professor at the University of Copenhagen. In an interview with ABC News in Australia, Professor Wæver cautions that what he sees as “climate inaction” might draw the U.N. into considering other means to ensure its goals are met, even if that leads to global armed conflict. Professor Wæver says more resistance to change could potentially threaten democracy although the U.N. would counter that the end justified the means in much the same way countries...

The protection of Palestinian civilians could be improved by the deployment of U.N.-mandated armed forces or unarmed observers, a beefed-up U.N. civilian presence or expanded U.N. assistance, Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a report on Friday. The United Nations General Assembly requested the report in a resolution adopted in June that condemned Israel for excessive force against Palestinian civilians and denounced the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israeli civilian areas, but did not mention Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza. The resolution asked for proposals to ensure “the safety, protection and well-being of the Palestinian civilian population under...

With two of out every five member states of the United Nations not yet having paid their dues for 2018, the world body says it has never been so far behind in receiving contributions by this time of the year, and officials are looking for belt-tightening options. Among the 81 countries yet to pay, by far the biggest amount due is the United States’ contribution of $591.3 million, which comprises 22 percent of the total regular budget for 2018. Next up are Brazil ($102.7 million, or 3.8 percent of the budget), Saudi Arabia ($30.8 million, 1.14 percent) and Argentina ($23.9...

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wrote in a letter to nine nonprofit groups this week that the U.S. will leave the U.N. Human Rights Council unless the organization undertakes "considerable reform." The UNHRC may be the silliest organization in the U.N. To allow countries like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and China to sit in judgment on any country's human rights record is beyond absurd. Somehow, the UNHRC never gets around to examining the human rights record of most of those states and, instead, concentrates its fire on the U.S. and Israel – two of the most liberal, tolerant democracies in the...

The Trump administration has not been shy about its plans to cut the federal government’s size, spending, influence and control. Among the specific targets is funding of the United Nations, including its abortion and climate change agendas, according to ForeignPolicy.com. Last year, the U.N.’s Security Council issued a stunning resolution condemning U.S. ally Israel for building housing in disputed territory it won in the 1967 war initiated by its Arab neighbors. Though it was just latest of many U.N. attacks on Israel, the overreach this time prompted a reaction, including calls to withdraw U.S. funding of the global body and...

“The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has provided oversight and recommendations for improvement of police services in a number of cities with consent decrees. This is one of the most effective ways to reduce discrimination in law enforcement and it needs to be beefed up and increased to cover as many of the 18,000-plus local law enforcement jurisdictions.” That was United Nations Rapporteur Maina Kai on July 27, a representative of the U.N. Human Rights Council, who on the tail-end of touring the U.S., endorsed a little-known and yet highly controversial practice by the Justice Department to...

So exactly what is the use in having the United Nations exist at all? It obviously doesn’t do very well in that whole “Let’s prevent war” thing and apparently has all but given up that idea. Unless one considers all their other, marginal efforts, aimed at creating a global government (which would probably operate about as well as the European Union) the United Nations has no reason to continue existing at all. After all, as we said at the start of this article, it doesn’t accomplish much, and then only on a very good day if at all.

The EU advisers have been telling the U.N. secretary-general that the process of annual agreements by which individual states have already signed away much of their sovereignty and independence has now gone far enough for the final stage to be achieved without anyone really fighting back. The one thing neither the EU nor the U.N. has sufficiently understood is the wisdom and prescience of your Founding Fathers. Mr. Obama may mark his “X” on the draft world-government treaty (it won’t be called that, of course, but that is what it will be). But unless two-thirds of the Senate can be...

Two U.N. peacekeepers were killed and nine others injured in a suicide attack on a patrol base in northern Mali, the U.N. peacekeeping mission (MINUSMA) said on Saturday. A vehicle exploded on Saturday morning next to the base in the village of Ber, about 60 km (40 miles) east of the desert city of Timbuktu, the statement said. It did not give the nationalities of the soldiers, although one MINUSMA official said that both the soldiers who died were from neighboring Burkina Faso. …

(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:...

Reuters) - The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday the first-ever treaty on global arms trade that seeks to regulate the $70 billion international business in conventional arms ranging from light weapons to battle tanks and warships. There were 154 votes in favor, 3 against and 23 abstentions. Iran, Syria and North Korea last week prevented a treaty-drafting conference at U.N. headquarters from reaching the required consensus to adopt the treaty. The Iranian, Syrian and North Korean delegations cast the sole votes against the treaty on Tuesday. Iran, which is under a U.N. arms embargo over its nuclear...

Obama has given the UN permission to send representatives to monitor the November 6 election in all 50 states, and Fox says they are on the way. The stated purpose is "to ensure no voter suppression of blacks and other minorities." The UN watchers will likely include career criminals from some of the world's worst tyrannies. Why are the states' governors allowing this to occur?

Except in the United States, where it became a very contentious talking point, the US still holding firmly to the 18th-century idea that power should lie with the will of the people.

Excerpt - LONDON, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Georgia is calling for a United Nations' peacekeeping force to intervene to halt its conflict with Russia, a Georgian diplomat said. ~ snip ~ "We need troops (on the) ground," he told Reuters in an interview late on Monday. "Let it be a U.N.-mandated international force, ideally EU," he said. Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, would have the ability to veto any such move. ~ snip ~

An international watchdog must be set up urgently to investigate widespread cases of child sex abuse by aid workers and peacekeepers, a British charity said today. Save the Children demanded action after its research found that starving and desperate youngsters as young as six were being coerced to sell sex for food, money, soap and even mobile phones in war zones and disaster areas. Hundreds of young people from Ivory Coast, Southern Sudan and Haiti were involved in the research behind the conclusions. One of them was 'Elizabeth', who was 12-years-old when she was snatched from the roadside early one...

Lebanon has informed the United Nations that pro-Damascus Palestinian militants are massing fighters near the border with Syria, an official said Tuesday, as the U.N. voiced fears of rising strife in the divided country. "The government sent reports to the United Nations noting the observation last week of concentrations (of armed men) from Fatah-Intifada and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command," the source said. The fighters were seen in two areas, Qussaya and Halwa, in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley close to the Syrian border, the source said. The Western-backed government says Syria is seeking to destabilize...

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution authorizing a regional peacekeeping force to be deployed in Somalia. The resolution, co-sponsored by the United States, Congo, Ghana and Tanzania, also eased the 1992 arms embargo on Somalia to facilitate the deployment of the peacekeeping force. It authorized the 7-nation Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an east African group, and the African Union to establish "a protection and training mission in Somalia" for an initial period of six months. The regional force would monitor progress made by both sides in implementing...

The United States is lobbying to put an American, possibly a general, in charge of all UN peacekeeping operations in a move that could offer Washington an exit strategy in Iraq.The unprecedented US bid for the top UN peacekeeping post would place an American in command of the 95,000 UN peacekeepers in trouble spots from Lebanon to Sudan. The American lobbying effort is set to prove hugely controversial. If successful, the change would amount to a radical remaking of the organisation, bringing it closer to its origin in the Second World War as a US-led alliance. It is also stirring...

WASHINGTON – There are mixed signals coming from Mexico about the fate of a proposed mega-port in Baja California for mainly Chinese goods that would be shipped on rail lines and "NAFTA superhighways" running through the U.S. to Canada. The port at Punta Colonet, planned as a major container facility to transfer Asian goods into America's heartland, got at least a temporary setback when a Mexican businessman announced a competing project in which he was seeking to secure mineral rights in the area. Gabriel Chavez, originally one of the principal movers behind the port plan, now says there are significant...