Was it wise for the Obama administration to reverse the Bush administration’s policy of distancing the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council? With the Council’s 15th session underway, it’s a question worth asking. The Council has been receiving more attention than unusual lately because the administration recently submitted …
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a major foreign policy speech at the Council on Foreign Relations earlier today touting the Obama Administration’s foreign policy. The speech was wide ranging. The bulk of the speech was populated by platitudes and generalities intended to emphasize the Administration’s dedication to maintaining America’s …
North Korea’s status as an international pariah is richly deserved. The country is a proliferator of nuclear technology having helped build a Syrian nuclear site that was destroyed by Israel and is believed to be assisting Burma in its own clandestine nuclear program. North Korea successfully detonated two nuclear devices …
The fact that the Obama Administration mentioned the Arizona law involving illegal immigration and the federal government’s legal challenge in its submission to the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) for the upcoming review of America’s human rights record under the Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) has been raising eyebrows. The …
A recent story by Fox News provides yet another example of the United Nations Development Program’s refusal to accede to an unfortunate reality: that the organization’s efforts to work with, and through, the world’s most despotic regimes are regularly twisted to serve the goals of the regime rather than the …
The United States spent $28.7 billion dollars in 2009 on official development assistance, more than any other country in the world. There is no denying that many people in poor nations live in desperate conditions and Americans rightly want to help them improve their lives. In an effort to measure …
An op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Robert McDowell, a commissioner of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, warns that a FCC proposal to regulate broadband Internet access could lead to international regulation of the Internet by the International Telecommunications Union. The ITU, a largely autonomous organization that actually predates …
North Korea came under criticism from Amnesty International last week for the dismal state of the country’s health care system. While North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) has a well-earned reputation for disregarding the interests of its people – malnutrition is common and many of the …
Going into the Review Conference of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Kampala, Uganda, it was clear that the highest priority on the American agenda was to defeat an amendment that would grant the ICC jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. At the very least, the U.S. wanted to convince …
Typically, international conferences like the Review Conference of the International Criminal Court are predictable, even boring. The months (or, in this case, years) prior to the conference are spent in meetings, sifting through various positions and policy red lines among the delegations, so that differences are minor by the time …
