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A man rushes past members of security forces during clashes between gangs and security forces, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti November 11, 2024.
UN will resume aid flights to Haiti as gangs gain ground
The UN Humanitarian Air Service is scheduled to restart flights to Haiti on Wednesday, a week after several planes attempting to land at Port-au-Prince airport came under small arms fire. The attacks wounded a flight attendant and resulted in the US Federal Aviation Administration banning all commercial flights to the island nation for a month.
Despite the arrival this summer of a Kenyan-led international force to help Haitian National Police push back against growing gang violence, the gangs have continued to sow chaos. The UN estimates that 20,000 people fled Port-au-Prince over the course of four days of fighting last week, and on Monday, an attack on the affluent suburb of Petion-Ville — as safe a place as you’ll find in the capital — resulted in at least 28 deaths. Women and girls are being victimized through the systemic use of sexual violence by the gangs, and medical providers have reported a “worrying increase” of such attacks this year, with some areas seeing 40 rape victims seeking treatment daily, just a fraction of the total.
Police are far from blameless: Doctors Without Borders says cops attacked one of their ambulances on Nov. 11, tear gassed the paramedics, held them captive, and summarily executed at least two patients, who the police said were gang members. There is chaos in the corridors of power, as GZERO reported last week, with erstwhile Prime Minister Garry Conille forced out of office and accusations of corruption flying in the transitional presidential council.
Is there hope? Not much. The resumption of aid flights may help some Haitians avoid acute hunger but will do little to end the violence. We’re watching for another 600 Kenyan troops to be deployed this month as promised, and to see whether other countries that have pledged forces follow through. We’re also following US efforts to transform the Kenyan-led mission into a proper UN peacekeeping operation before the Trump administration takes power in late January.
AI-generated cyber threats have C-suite leaders on edge.
Biden will support a UN cybercrime treaty
The Biden administration is planning to support a controversial United Nations treaty on cybercrime, which will be the first legally binding agreement on cybersecurity.
The treaty would be an international agreement to crack down on child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, and so-called revenge porn. It would also increase information-sharing between parties of the treaty, increasing the flow of evidence the United States, for one, has on cross-border cybercrime. This will also make it easier to extradite criminals.
But the treaty has faced severe pushback from advocacy groups and even Democratic lawmakers. On Oct. 29, six Democratic US senators, including Tim Kaine and Ed Markey, wrote a letter to the Biden administration saying they fear the treaty, called the UN Convention Against Cybercrime, could “legitimize efforts by authoritarian countries like Russia and China to censor and surveil internet users, furthering repression and human rights abuses around the world.” They said the treaty is a threat to “privacy, security, freedom of expression, and artificial intelligence safety.”
The senators wrote that the Convention doesn’t include a needed “good-faith exception for security research” or a “requirement for malicious or fraudulent intent for unauthorized access crimes.” This runs afoul of the Biden administration’s executive order on AI, which requires “red-teaming” efforts that could involve hacking or simulating attacks to troubleshoot problems with AI systems. The UN will vote on the Convention later this week, but even if the United States supports it, it would need a two-thirds majority in the US Senate — a difficult mark to achieve — to ratify it.UN flags and logo.
Scandals and hope at the UN: Is it worth it?
What good is the United Nations in 2024?
With wars raging, AI disrupting, inequality growing, and climate change accelerating, UN Secretary-General António Guterres says that “a powder keg risks engulfing the world.”
That’s one reason why the GZERO team is paying close attention to a giant gabfest, where leaders like President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, policymakers, diplomats, and influencers from 193 countries have gathered this week to try to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems.
It’s why you saw Ian Bremmer’sexclusive interview with Guterres on our PBS TV program GZERO World or, as we reported today in our morning newsletter, we have Iran’s Vice President for Strategic Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif on the show denying that Iran was involved in the assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump, while admitting that US election hacking came from someone in his country. Watch the clip here and tune in next week for the full interview on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer.
It’s also why we hosted and broadcast a series of key livestreams with world leaders covering everything from governing AI to the conflicts in Europe, Lebanon, Gaza, and Ukraine.
I have been incredibly proud of the work the team has done sorting through the global noise to get at the clear political signals while highlighting the issues in an insightful, nonpartisan way.
But the question remains: Why bother paying attention to the UN?
It’s easy to be cynical about the UN. As Brett Stephens once described it, “The U.N. is a never-ending scandal disguised as an everlasting hope. The hope is that dialogue can overcome distrust, and collective security can be made to work in the interests of humanity. Reality says otherwise.”
Scandals, failures, hypocrisies, and disappointments fly around the UN as prominently as the flags around its New York City headquarters, and Stephens waved many of them, from the failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda and the massacre in Srebrenica, to corruption in the oil-for-food program in Iraq. That was back in 2018.
Today there are even more, from the outrage surrounding allegations that some UNRWA workers worked with Hamas during the Oct. 7 massacres, to the obstructive dysfunctions of the five permanent members that have veto powers, which has proven to be a tragic obstacle to real global action in key conflicts, like Sudan. It’s hard to take the UN seriously when Iran gets a turn chairing its Human Rights Council Social Forum.
Even reading through the main agenda of the 79th General Assembly session, it’s understandable why some critics experience high-speed eye-rolling that rivals the backspin on a Roger Federer backhand. For example, one goal says: “Achieving global nuclear disarmament is the highest disarmament priority of the United Nations.” How’s that going? Just yesterday, Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced that he was alerting his nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold needed to justify the use of nuclear weapons, a major escalation in the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, less than 20% of the famed 17 Sustainable Development Goals are on track to be completed by 2030.
“The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today it wouldn’t make a bit of difference,” quipped John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN under former President George W. Bush. Many critics today still think he’s right.
But is he?
Only pointing out the UN’s failures to solve complex global problems is like describing Ted Williams as a guy who failed to get a hit 60% of the time, instead of noting that a baseball player hitting .400 is one of the greatest feats in sports. It’s like dismissing venture capital investors as losers because at least 80% of their investments go bust, instead of focusing on the ones that succeed and more than make up for the other losses. In very hard challenges, a low success rate can still be a major victory.
Back in 1973, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber coined the term “wicked problem” to describe political, environmental, or security challenges that are uniquely difficult to solve and may have no single right answer. That’s where the UN is needed most, to pull in global voices that often disagree or are at war with each other and make a genuine attempt to solve wicked problems. That takes time.
The fact is, there are many UN successes, notably the World Food Programme, which helps over 80 million people, delivering food, medicines, and vaccines to countries in crisis. There are peace treaties and accords establishing norms and conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, its most famous document.
This past week, there was a major success in global governance on AI with the Global Digital Compact, which was signed by most major countries except Russia. They agreed to everything from global standards on accessibility, use, and design, to the establishment of an international scientific panel, which will — like the IPCC does for climate — create a measuring tool and a road map for how AI governance might unfold. There is literally no other place in the world where this could happen.
Is there a need for UN reform? Of course. That is why, for example, there is a strong push to create two permanent seats for Africa on the Security Council. In this video that I urge you to check out, Ian Bremmer argues that despite the challenges facing the world’s largest multilateral organization, the UN is more relevant than ever.
But the institution is only as good as the members make it through their financial contributions, attendance, and support. One of the key challenges is making all the work that is happening — and there is a lot — understandable and relevant to the wider public in order to overcome the massive trust deficit the UN faces.
Reestablishing trust takes radical transparency, and that’s why GZERO has made such an effort to pull back the curtain and give people a chance to see, hear, and debate the real policies and ideas that are being pitched. You should be able to judge for yourself if the UN is useful or not. We hope our coverage gives you the tools to do just that.
Graphic Truth: Biggest contributors to UN peacekeeping
UN Peacekeeping is all about helping countries navigate the often rocky transition out of violent conflict, with the hope of laying the groundwork for a lasting peace. For over 70 years, peacekeepers have been deployed around the world to help maintain security, protect civilians and human rights, and oversee peace processes. There are currently 11 active peacekeeping missions around the world.
Canada played a central role in the early development of UN Peacekeeping. In 1957, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his vital role in establishing a UN Emergency Force that helped resolve the Suez Crisis of 1956 in Egypt.
UN Peacekeeping is financed by UN member states — and has a budget of roughly $6.4 billion — with countries like the US, China, and Japan among the top financial contributors. Meanwhile, the biggest contributors of personnel to UN Peacekeeping are Bangladesh, Nepal, and India. Do you think UN Peacekeeping is worth all that goes into it? We’d love to hear from you!
Can Zelensky's 'victory plan' bring peace to Ukraine?
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm, Sweden.
First question, is Zelensky's finalized 'victory plan' realistic to bring peace to Ukraine?
Well, the peace plan that he's talking about is a proposal that he's going to present to President Biden at the meeting in UN in the next few days. They are there for the UN General Assembly, and it consists essentially of beefing up Ukraine's military capabilities with the possibility to use more long-range weapons and other things in order to substantially increase the military difficulties that Russia already having. Thus, possibly, hopefully, making it certain, making it clear to the Kremlin that there's no way to victory and that they have to sit down and agree to something that is acceptable and that can be called peace of some sort. Will this work? Remains to be seen, to put it in the mildest possible way.
Second question, why is there backlash against EU's anti-deforestation law?
Well, it's not unique for that particular one. I mean, all of the legislation for the so-called Green Deal that was decided due to the last five years, a lot of it is fairly complicated and has significant burdens on industry in order to reporting requirements and all of those. That includes the deforestation law. So there is a push to say, "Well, well it's all good. But let's delay it somewhat so that business has the possibility of catching up with all of the requirements." You will see that debate about several aspects of the Green Deal. It doesn't endanger the deal itself, but it perhaps streamlines and perhaps delays it somewhat.
Hello Kitty on the screens at the UN General Assembly
How it feels to be “the future” at the UN’s Summit of the Future
“What kind of world would you like to live in?” asked Hello Kitty – yes, the cartoon cat – before a group of youth leaders gathered in the UN’s General Assembly hall on Friday.
They were there to represent countries and causes at the Summit for the Future, a high-level meeting that culminated in the “grown-up” world leaders endorsing a 60-point Pact for the Future on Sunday.
That pact, adopted by the UN’s 193 member states, includes everything from a compact on AI governance, to urging countries to supercharge their sustainability efforts, to pushing for Africa’s inclusion on the Security Council, to devising a global governance framework for preventing war in outer space.
But a key part of the Pact is a “Declaration on Future Generations,” which promises to create “meaningful opportunities for young people to participate in the decisions that shape their lives, especially at the global level.”
And that’s where the UN, it seems, has a problem.
During the summit’s opening ceremony, Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged that the underrepresentation of young people at the UN was an issue that the institution is keen to address.
As of 2022, only 3.7% of UN employees were under 30 years old. Guterres pledged to improve that, saying it is important to have young people “working [at the UN] daily, where the decisions are made, where ideas are born.”
The UN, he said, is putting mechanisms in place to “ensure that in the [UN] decision-making process, there are moments where there is an active intervention of young people, not just their consultation.”
But many young people felt that they should have been involved in the finalization of the Pact for the Future on Sunday, which they reported only involved UN stakeholders.
“Almost none of the youth delegates were really engaged in the process" of endorsing the pact, said Ukraine’s Youth Delegate to the UN, Yuri Lomikovskyi, age 22.“A declaration on youth participation was made without youth participation.”
He faulted the pact for repeating old initiatives and frameworks – like the Paris Agreement, the UN Charter, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights – without adding “mechanisms to actually make them happen, especially amidst modern challenges,” including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza wars, the climate emergency, and democratic backsliding around the world.
Josh Oxby, 26, the youth Global Focal Point for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal on energy, expressed a similar concern about accountability.
“It's all very well and good to commit to these ideas and to focus on meaningful engagement,” he said, “but the issue now is what can we do to hold it to account or challenge it in the future?”
These views represent a broader feeling among the youth delegates. In a live poll conducted during the event, only 3% of the 669 youth participants said they felt they had direct power in shaping the Pact’s agenda, with several accusing the UN of “youth-washing.”
The youth delegates said they felt valued, but only to a certain degree. “When there are young people in the room, we make the older generations think about their own families and kids, " says the UN’s youth development delegate Asma Rouabhia, 28, “but there is a feeling that because young people are not as experienced, we don’t really know what we are talking about.”
“I might not have all the technical knowledge, but I have the personal passion,” she added. Rouabhia became an energy advocate because insufficient energy access in her native Tunisia caused her mother to nearly freeze while giving birth to her.
The UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs, Felipe Paullier, says that while polls show that young people have outsized faith in multilateralism, the UN “risks losing them if it is not conscious about the changes it needs to make structurally, to increase youth participation.”
“Fifty percent of the world’s population is under 30 years old,” says Paullier, “if [the UN] doesn’t make these changes, we are screwed.”
FILE PHOTO: UN General Assembly votes at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, U.S. May 23, 2024.
Can the UN save our future?
Today marks the first major day of the UN General Assembly, a forum where the UN’s 193 member states gather to debate global problems and work toward solutions. The event kicks off with the Summit of the Future — a two-day event that UN Secretary-General António Guterres says is a “once-in-a-generation chance” to reinvigorate international cooperation and forge a new global consensus on shaping our collective future.
GZERO will be on the ground delivering exclusive content from UNGA, but before we get to the high-level meetings and major speeches next week, here’s what to expect from the Summit of the Future:
Day one kicks off with the kids. The first day focuses on youth participation at the UN, a fitting start for a summit aimed at creating a better future. On the agenda is gender equality, sustainability, peace building, and digital equity. Climate change will be a central focus of the day, as the event coincides with Climate Week beginning in New York City, and comes ahead of the review of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (spoiler alert: they are off track).
Studies show that people 18 to 29 years old are more favorable toward the UN than those ages 50 and older, but that optimism is rarely translated into tangible power when it comes to UN resolutions and actions. GZERO’s Riley Callanan will meet with Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs Felipe Paullier ahead of the summit to discuss why young people should care about the UN, and the role they can play in revitalizing the 78-year-old institution for a new generation.
Day two gets into the nitty-gritty with the aim of figuring out how the UN can harness international cooperation to actually create a better future. There are three key parts of the day: sustainability, peace building, and technology.
On technology, the UN is unveiling its“Governing AI for Humanity,” report, which lays out how the UN can create aframework for global AI governance. The aim: ensure AI development is humane, equitable, and harnessed to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
They are also expected to agree on the Global Digital Compact, which will task the UN with ensuring that AI is used safely and for global benefit, and with bridging the technological divide that exists between wealthy countries and the rest of the world. The difference: One is a framework, one is a global agreement. Both could be monumental in creating international governance over the technology that will likely shape the future.
Ian Bremmer, founder and president of both Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, served as a rapporteur for the UN High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence, and will be presenting the report and the Global Digital Compact alongside other experts at the event on Saturday.
We will be bringing you all of the highlights of UNGA in our newsletter, but if you want to really get a feel for what it's like to be on the ground, follow us onX,Instagram, andYouTube.
A permanent Security Council seat for Africa?
Guterres offered few specifics on how Africa should be represented. That appears to be a question for the African Union. For now, the 15-member Security Council consists of five permanent members with veto power – China, France, Russia, the US, and the UK – and 10 nonpermanent seats allocated regionally, including three seats for African states, two for Asia-Pacific, two for Latin America and the Caribbean, two for Western Europe and other states; and one for Eastern Europe.
UNSC permanent members have a veto over votes of the Council. Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio told the Council on Monday that Africa should have two permanent seats and added that “Africa wants theveto abolished. However, if UN member states wish to retain the veto, it must be extended to all new permanent members as a matter of justice.”
Guterres said in January that all five current permanent members favored greater African representation, though they will certainly haggle over the details of reform. But for now, the number of voices in favor, at least in principle, continues to grow.