International treaties sound like a good idea, especially when they claim to protect vulnerable people. The problem is, America already does more than any other country to ensure equal rights for its people—and the United Nations just wants the power to interfere in American law. The Senate is now considering …
Earlier today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) announced his intention to proceed to executive session tomorrow to consider the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), an international treaty purporting to protect the rights of the disabled that the Obama Administration signed in July 2009. However, U.S. …
Last Wednesday, the First Committee of the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution to hold a final negotiating conference on the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) on March 18–28, using the treaty text from last July’s conference and under the rule of consensus (i.e., any nation can block the treaty …
Most people are familiar with the U.N.’s notorious ineffectiveness, but viewers of the documentary U.N. Me will reach an inevitable conclusion: It’s even worse than we thought. Managing to fit as many U.N. scandals into the short documentary as possible, filmmakers Ami Horowitz and Matthew Groff rely on interviews with …
A nuclear-armed Iran was a key topic of discussion at the U.N. General Assembly this week, including speeches by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama. While both leaders agreed that “a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained,” there are key differences in approaching …
Judging by President Obama’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly yesterday, U.S. public diplomacy messaging on the Middle East crisis is stuck perpetually on a setting of “apology.” It has been this way since the much-criticized September 11 statement from the U.S. embassy in Cairo, which apologized to the threatening …
