I’ve mentioned previously that my pal Tony Fleming runs a very well-done blog covering the race of the UN Secretary-General position in 2007. Tony tells me that he has been invited by the Washington Post to provide background material on the UN Secretary General’s race. Using this material, the Post asked leading editors, writers and…
Category: United Nations
Avatars and humans stand up against poverty
In my previous job, I was responsible for promoting civil society activity on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, a set of development targets agreed to by the governments of the world in 2000 at the UN General Assembly. It’s an important list of commitments to combat some of worst social ills — including poverty,…
UN budget crisis averted — diplomats’ kids will not go hungry
As I previously blogged, the UN was facing a severe budget crisis in July because the General Assembly’s budget committee was holding up re-authorizing funding for the second quarter of 2006 until various management reforms were instituted. This despite significant progress at the UN on a range of upgrades to their management structure and processes,…
UN Launches online consultation on “System Coherence”
I just got a notice from the UN Non-governmental Liaison Service that the United Nations has launched an online consultation with civil society organizations as part of a larger effort to increase “system-wide coherence” of the UN’s activities in the areas of development, humanitarian assistance and the environment. The Secretary General earlier this year established…
SMS from starving Somali
Lots of UN techie news in the past days, I am just starting to catch up now. The UN World Food Programme issued a press release about a Somali refugee in Kenya who sent a text message to the London office of the WFP. The message was: My name is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you…
UNHCR launches online campaign for nine million refugee kids
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in partnership with Nike and Microsoft, has launched a new website ninemillion.org as an appeal to help the estimated nine million refugee children around the world. The objectives of the campaign are to: raise awareness about refugee children and youth raise funds for education and sport programs for refugee…
Kofi warns of UN budget crisis in July
Kofi Annan has issued a warning that unless the budget cap is lifted, the United Nations will face a severe budget crisis in July. Last year, the UN General Assembly’s Fifth Committee, which is responsible for setting the UN’s overall programme budget, only approved funding for the institution until the middle of 2006, with the…
Food Force: you played it, now blog it
The World Food Programme has really capitalized on its first video game Food Force by creating versions of the game in several languages, most recently Polish, and now launching a blog featuring one of the in-game characters “Joe”. The blog looks like it is going to be a curious mixture of real world examinations of…
Strong words from UN official on lack of US leadership
Mark Malloch Brown, United Nations Deputy Secretary General, gave a strong statement recently decrying the United States lack of support for the United Nations. In a speech to a conference sponsored by the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation on June 6, Brown made a very "un-UN" speech, in his words. Brown noted…
UNAIDS warns about scam emails
I never intended this blog to be the disseminator of knowledge about scam emails purporting to be from the United Nations. And yet, that has become by far my largest “audience” from looking at my stats. I just found another warning from a UN agency about these scam emails, this one from UNAIDS: Various scam…