|  Barbara Crossette, UN correspondent for The Nation and the author of several books on Asia, was The New York Times bureau chief at the UN from 1994 to 2001 and before that a Times chief correspondent in Southeast Asia and South Asia. She was also a diplomatic correspondent in Washington and a reporter in Central America, the Caribbean and Canada and deputy foreign editor and senior editor in charge of the Times’s weekend news operations. Before joining the Times, she was an editor and writer for The Birmingham Post in Birmingham, England. In 1991, Crossette won the George Polk Award for foreign reporting for her coverage of the assassination in India of a former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi. In 1998, she won the 25-year achievement award of The Silurians, a society of New York journalists, and the annual prize for international reporting from InterAction, a coalition of more than 150 international nonprofit aid and development organizations. In 1999, she received the Business Council of the United Nations’ Korn Ferry Award for outstanding reporting, and in 2003 the United Nations Correspondents’ Association’s lifetime achievement award. In 2008 she received a Fulbright Award for contributions to international understanding and in 2010 the Shorenstein Prize for her writings on Asia. Ms. Crossette is the author of "So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas" and a book of travel essays, "The Great Hill Stations of Asia." In 2000, she wrote a survey of India and Indian-American relations, "India: Old Civilization in a New World," for the Foreign Policy Association. She is a co-author of a chapter on India in a 2009 survey of global stakeholders, "Powers and Principles: International Leadership in a Shrinking World," published by Lexington Books for the Stanley Foundation. Crossette has been a member of the adjunct faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; a Fulbright teaching fellow in journalism at Punjab University in Chandigarh, India; the Ferris Visiting Professor on Politics and the Press at Princeton University; and a seminar leader on the UN and international affairs at Bard College. Since 2003, she has led journalism workshops in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos and continues to work with Cambodian reporters covering the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal. She was a Knight International Press Fellow for 2004-2005 in Brazil. Born in Philadelphia, Ms. Crossette received a B.A. in history and political science in 1963 from Muhlenberg College, where she is now on the board of trustees. She is also a trustee of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She writes regularly for the online news Web sites of the United Nations Association of the United States and is a member of the publications board at the Foreign Policy Association.
In recent legislation, two U.S. House of Representative committees have mounted an intense campaign against American aid for family planning internationally. Valerie DeFillipo has been on the front lines of this battle for more than three decades and in July she was named president of Americans for UNFPA, a nongovernmental citizens’ support group for the United Nations Population Fund. Read More >
A wrenching human crisis can’t get much worse than this. A famine begun by a drought of historic proportions on the Horn of Africa, compounded by lawlessness and violence in the worst affected country, Somalia, has put more than 10 million people in danger of starvation. The numbers are rising every day as hundreds of thousands try to flee across a treeless landscape littered with the bodies of skeletal cattle and the little mounds of new earth that mark the graves of those who didn’t make it to food or water. Read More >
For those who have joined the debate over which nations should get permanent Security Council seats in any future enlargement, 2011 is an unusually interesting year. The diplomatic performances of several leading contenders for permanent membership are on display among the council’s nonpermanent members. Brazil, Germany, India and South Africa are now rotating council members, as is Nigeria, which cannot be ruled out as another candidate. Read More >
The gaunt faces and stick-thin bodies of starving families from Somalia and Ethiopia who have walked days without food to reach overcrowded refugee camps in Kenya are a reminder that as developing nations move toward improvement in the daily lives of their people, a cruel act of nature –in this case a catastrophic drought – can undo fragile gains all too quickly. Read More >
As the summer travel season goes into high gear, good news for the global tourist trade is coming from the United Nations World Tourism Organization. Despite a lingering recession, unemployment and upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa, 2011 is off to a good start, led by a 17 percent growth in visitors to South America in the first four months of this year. Read More >
To see firsthand the dramatic changes global warming is wreaking on one of the remotest corners of the world, members of the United Nations Foundation board traveled to Norway last week to meet with scientific experts and to visit the island of Svalbard, home to the northernmost community in the world. Read More >
The General Assembly formally elected Ban Ki-moon to a second five-year term as Untied Nations Secretary General on June 21, only four days after the Security Council backed him for the position in a unanimous resolution. His first term ends on Dec. 31. Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister little known outside Asia when he was elected to his first term, got off to a slow start in the eyes of some diplomats in New York, but over the last year or two has grown in stature through his strong leadership in complicated crises. He was unflinching in demanding over several months of an intense and violent stand-off in Côte d’Ivoire that the elected president, Alassane Ouattara, be allowed to take office and that Laurent Gbagbo, his predecessor, be forced to step down and abide by the result of the vote. Under Ban’s leadership, the UN took a forceful stand in April behind Ouattara, who is now in office. Read More >
The General Assembly formally elected Ban Ki-moon to a second five-year term as Untied Nations Secretary General on June 21, only four days after the Security Council backed him for the position in a unanimous resolution. His first term ends on Dec. 31. Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister little known outside Asia when he was elected to his first term, got off to a slow start in the eyes of some diplomats in New York, but over the last year or two has grown in stature through his strong leadership in complicated crises. He was unflinching in demanding over several months of an intense and violent stand-off in Côte d’Ivoire that the elected president, Alassane Ouattara, be allowed to take office and that Laurent Gbagbo, his predecessor, be forced to step down and abide by the result of the vote. Under Ban’s leadership, the UN took a forceful stand in April behind Ouattara, who is now in office. Read More >
BEIJING -- While China's reluctance to support new international climate change agreements has been the focus of much attention in recent years, within the country the Chinese have begun working with the United Nations to lower environmental damage from high-pollution power generation and other sources of harmful emissions. The benefits could be global. Read More >
In a secret ballot, the General Assembly elected 15 new members to the United Nations Human Rights Council on May 20. The new members did not include Syria, which had withdrawn its candidacy before the vote under pressure from human rights groups and a number of nations that included the United States. Nicaragua was also not elected, having been criticized for its rights record. Read More >
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