organizations-established-by-the-united-nations

"In its Order, which has binding effect, the Court indicates the following provisional measures [...] The Russian Federation shall immediately suspend the military operations that it commenced on 24 February 2022 in the territory of Ukraine [...] The Russian Federation shall ensure that any military or irregular armed units which may be directed or supported by it, as well as any organizations and persons which may be subject to its control or direction, take no steps in furtherance of the military operations referred to [...] above; [...] Both Parties shall refrain from any action which might aggravate or extend the dispute before the Court or make it more difficult to resolve."

"Despite the high expectations that attended its birth, the eighteen-member CHR was immediately dominated by Cold War realities. Its chair, Eleanor Roosevelt, was kept on a tight leash by the US government, which was determined to thwart any binding obligations that interfered with “the internal problems of nations” and to use the commission’s forum mainly to castigate the Soviets’ misdeeds. The US and Soviet delegates both rejected proposals to allow an individual to petition the UN over human rights violations by his or her government. The two Superpowers were also behind the CHR’s momentous decision to split its task into three separate components: the drafting of a nonbinding declaration of principles, followed—at some indeterminate interval—by the conclusion of a human rights convention and, finally, the creation of a means of enforcement. The first task was completed within two years, but the second took twenty more, and the third still another year to come to life. By 1948 the Superpowers had effectively blocked the efforts of human rights activists and the smaller countries to play a significant role in global politics."

"UN Human Rights Council has appealed to increase humanitarian support to 3.5 million people including 700,000 from 2021 alone who were displaced due to the conflict in Afghanistan, the United Nations body said in a statement. Spokesperson of UNHCR... said... that around 23 million people, or 55 per cent of the population, are facing extreme levels of hunger - nearly nine million of whom are at risk of famine. UNHCR has assisted some 700,000 displaced people across the country in 2021, the majority since mid-August. Every week, the agency is helping nearly 60,000 people, according to the statement. "But as we reach thousands of people, we find thousands more people who are in need of humanitarian assistance", Baloch said, appealing for "further resources for the most vulnerable". He noted that "single mothers with no shelter or food for their children", displaced older persons left to care for orphaned grandchildren, and people taking care of loved ones with special needs."

"The Nelson Mandela Moot Court Competition, co-organized by the Human Rights Council Branch, is the only moot court competition for students from all around the world that is explicitly dedicated to human rights."

"The Task Force on Secretariat services, accessibility and use of information technology was established in July 2011. It is mandated to study issues related to the improvement of the secretariat services to the Council and its mechanisms, the accessibility to the Council’s work for persons with disabilities and the feasibility of the use of information technology."

"The Human Rights Council also works with the UN Special Procedures established by the former Commission on Human Rights and now assumed by the Council. These are made up of special rapporteurs, special representatives, independent experts and working groups that monitor, examine, advise and publicly report on thematic issues or human rights situations in specific countries."

"World Summit on the Information Society"

"United Nations television film series"

"The Council was created by the United Nations General Assembly on 15 March 2006 by resolution 60/251. Its first session took place from 19 to 30 June 2006. One year later, the Council adopted its "Institution-building package" to guide its work and set up its procedures and mechanisms. Among them were the Universal Periodic Review mechanism which serves to assess the human rights situations in all United Nations Member States, the Advisory Committee which serves as the Council’s “think tank” providing it with expertise and advice on thematic human rights issues and the Complaint Procedure which allows individuals and organizations to bring human rights violations to the attention of the Council."

"United Nations in popular culture"

"Model United Nations"

"List of current permanent representatives to the United Nations"

"It was my pleasure to speak to #AIPAC2019 today. My message was not only to reaffirm the essentiality of the U.S.-Israel relationship, but also that the U.S. stands with the Jewish people and Israel in the fight against the world’s oldest bigotry: anti-Semitism. The rise of anti-Semitism & anti-Zionism strikes at the very foundation of freedom. The Trump Administration opposes it unequivocally & will fight it relentlessly, from the fever swamp of the UN Human Rights Council to the world’s #1 proponent of anti-Semitism: Iran. We will not grow weary of this fight. Israel should be admired, not attacked, embraced, not vilified. I’m proud to lead American diplomacy to support Israel’s right to defend itself, stand with the Jewish people"

"The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them. It has the ability to discuss all thematic human rights issues and situations that require its attention throughout the year. It meets at the UN Office at Geneva."

"The World Food Programme, the world’s largest humanitarian organization dealing with hunger and food security, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize today, with its executive director David Beasley warning that the combination of conflict, climate crisis and COVID-19 could push 270 million people to the brink of starvation. In his acceptance speech, Beasley said, “Because of so many wars, climate change, the widespread use of hunger as a political and military weapon, and a global health pandemic that makes all of that exponentially worse, 270 million people are marching toward starvation. Failure to address their needs will cause a hunger pandemic which will dwarf the impact of COVID.”... The executive director, the former South Carolina Governor David Beasley, accepted this year’s Nobel Peace Prize award on behalf of the organization from its headquarters in Rome."

"As the World Food Programme accepts the Nobel Peace Prize, we look at the growing global hunger crisis amid the pandemic, the climate crisis and war. In the United States, as many as 50 million people could experience food insecurity before the end of the year — including one in four children. “It’s important to remember that hunger does not always happen because of natural disasters,” says Ricardo Salvador, director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It is often the result of things that we do to each other deliberately.”"

"While passing through the foyer of WFP, I could not avoid a glance at a wall covered with bronze plaques paying homage to WFP staff who had been killed in the field while trying to help starving people. Last time I saw the wall, sometime in 2018, there were 98 names. In times when every inhabitant on Planet Earth is overshadowed by COVID-19, a Nobel Peace Prize to WFP reminds us how precious we are to each other. When people are confronted with a disease that so far cannot be controlled by drugs and efficient health care it makes us realize the importance of ignoring petty chauvinism, narcissism, power games and egoism. It is high time to increase international cooperation and realizing that the Earth is an enclosed, biological sphere, where we for our own survival have to join forces to save both our planet and humanity. No nation can single-handedly combat a pandemic, neither can starvation and pollution be amended without international organisations. So let us rejoice in WFP´s Peace Prize and hope the world´s wealthy nations realize the urgency of supporting the organisation and replenish its funds. Their contributions have so far been insufficient for covering the identified needs of food-insecure populations and WFP´s funding gap is currently USD 4.1 billion and steadily increasing."

"A report prepared by the Global Network Against Food Crises, an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger, which acts under the auspices of the World Food Program, shows that in 2021 global levels of hunger surpassed all previous records — with close to 193 million people acutely food insecure and in need of urgent assistance across 53 countries and territories. This represents an increase of nearly 40 million people compared with 2020. According to the report, the outlook for 2022 is for further deterioration of global hunger levels, exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which is having severe repercussions on global food, energy and fertilizer prices... the geopolitics of famine is such that millions of lives are held hostage to conflicts far from the nations most in need. Hopefully, the US, Russia and the UN will be able to reach an equitable balance before it is too late."

"This is a very apt recognition for the organization. However, I think that executive director Beasley will also agree that the best circumstance would be that there be no need for an organization like the World Food Programme. What it is doing is heroic because it’s essentially delivering emergency food to populations that have no recourse. But we really need to be asking ourselves: How is it that in the 21st century, when the planet as a whole is producing almost half, again, as much in terms of calories that we need to feed everyone, that there are some people that are in such dire circumstances as he described? So, we must always do that work. We must support that work. We must congratulate the people that devote their lives to do that. But I think a more important calling is actually to prevent the incidence of hunger on the planet, which is entirely doable."

"During assignments as consultant to WFP´s Headquarters in Rome I have listened to people telling me about their experiences from being confronted with thousands of starving people, especially undernourished, sick and dying children. This while they were putting their own lives at risk, being surrounded by murderous armies, bandits and militias. I was also told about their discomfort at being forced to cooperate with politicians who used starving people as pawns in their cynical power games. When asked if they believed in WFP´s mandate and right to exist, they answered that if you have been confronted with the suffering of severely undernourished fellow human beings, you could not even imagine a justification for not trying to help them. “To witness someone dying due to undernourishment is horrible. How can your conscience endure the knowledge that you did nothing about it, while realizing that you could have saved the one who died.” The people I talked to were well aware that the organisation they served had its shortcomings, but they were also eager to amend them. They told me they felt privileged for having been provided with a possibility to ease the suffering of others."

"The World Food Programme (WFP) is the leading humanitarian organization saving lives and changing lives, delivering food assistance in emergencies and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. As the international community has committed to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition by 2030, one in nine people worldwide still do not have enough to eat. Food and food-related assistance lie at the heart of the struggle to break the cycle of hunger and poverty. For its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict, WFP was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020."

"On any given day, WFP has 5,600 trucks, 30 ships and nearly 100 planes on the move, delivering food and other assistance to those in most need. Every year, we distribute more than 15 billion rations at an estimated average cost per ration of US$ 0.61. These numbers lie at the roots of WFP’s unparalleled reputation as an emergency responder, one that gets the job done quickly at scale in the most difficult environments. WFP’s efforts focus on emergency assistance, relief and rehabilitation, development aid and special operations. Two-thirds of our work is in conflict-affected countries where people are three times more likely to be undernourished than those living in countries without conflict."

"WFP development projects focus on nutrition, especially for mothers and children, addressing malnutrition from the earliest stages through programmes targeting the first 1,000 days from conception to a child’s second birthday, and later through school meals. WFP is the largest humanitarian organisation implementing school feeding programmes worldwide and has been doing so for over 50 years. In 2019, WFP provided school meals to more than 17.3 million children in 50 countries, often in the hardest-to-reach areas."

"The executive director of the World Food Program is calling for the world’s billionaires to step up and help his organization fight hunger... David Beasley said he was supportive of capitalism but added that capitalism without a heart is a disaster. He said that the COVID-19 pandemic and the related government-mandated shutdowns to slow the spread of the virus caused over 100 million people to be on the brink of starvation worldwide... “I need an additional $6 billion this year to reach the 41 million ... that are knocking on famine’s door,” Beasley continued... He specifically mentioned Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and said that he needed just 10% of the $64 billion Bezos’s wealth grew by last year to fund the food program"

"Thank you for acknowledging our work of using food to combat hunger, to mitigate against destabilization of nations, to prevent mass migration, to end conflict and to create stability and peace. We believe food is the pathway to peace. I wish today that I could speak of how, working together, we could end hunger for all the 690 million people who go to bed hungry every night, but today we have a crisis at hand. This Nobel Peace Prize is more than a thank you; it is a call to action."

"Because of so many wars, climate change, the widespread use of hunger as a political and military weapon, and a global health pandemic that makes all of that exponentially worse, 270 million people are marching toward starvation. Failure to address their needs will cause a hunger pandemic which will dwarf the impact of COVID. And if that’s not bad enough, out of that 270 million, 30 million depend on us 100% for their survival. How will humanity respond?"

"What tears me up inside is this. This coming year, millions and millions and millions of my equals, my neighbors, your neighbors, are marching to the brink of starvation. We stand at what may be the most ironic moment in modern history. On the one hand, after a century of massive strides in eliminating extreme poverty, today those 200 million of our neighbors are on the brink of starvation. That’s more than the entire population of Western Europe. On the other hand, there is $400 trillion of wealth in our world today. Even at the height of the COVID pandemic, in just 90 days, an additional [$2.7] trillion of wealth was created. And we only need $5 billion to save 30 million lives from famine. What am I missing here?"

"I have done the usual things you do before an awards ceremony. After extensive high-level consultation, I think I now have the right suit and tie. Carefully folded in my pocket is a long list of people to praise, many far more deserving of praise than I. I am ready. Growing up in a small South Carolina town, I never imagined life would bring me to this moment and allow me to be part of the wonderful, blessed enterprise I have found in WFP, the World Food Programme. I feel pride today, but also a sense of shame I cannot seem to shake. There is failure in this victory. We are having our media moment while hunger still rages. I know that just as WFP receives this coveted award, in a nameless village in Yemen, a skeletal child will be hovering close to death, hooked to a feeding tube. You have, no doubt, seen these children in fleeting images on your television screens. Well, let me tell you those images don’t come close to the reality. I have met these frail Yemeni children, most often in hot and dusty clinics filled with flies. The mothers usually give up on shooing the flies away and sit quietly by their sides. When you enter the room they pray you are the western miracle that has come to save their child. You know you’re not and you could not be more uncomfortable."

"The WFP reflects the best in humanity and the worst. It exists because many of us care and it exists because many of us do not. Sadly, most hunger today is a self-inflicted wound. Six out of 10 of the world’s hungry live in countries at war with themselves – more than 400 million people... Hunger in Yemen is complex – fighting still rages and donor confidence is ebbing, while food prices are up 140%... Millions are food insecure and famine-like conditions have begun to appear. It is, simply put, a country in chaos. But we have brought Yemen back from the brink before... Coping with the bitter politics in Yemen will surely test us. But if we are determined, we can succeed again. We cannot let hunger simply fade into the background in the age of Covid-19. My dream for today is that all the feeding tubes in Yemen will suddenly vanish and those tiny children will go home smiling in the arms of the mothers. What is happening in Yemen now is a shame. We all share that shame and we need to end it together."

"The numbers are staggering— as reflected in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic which has triggered a new round of food shortages, famine and starvation. According to the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP) 690 million people do not have enough to eat while 130 million additional people risk being pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of the year. “Hunger is an outrage in a world of plenty. An empty stomach is a gaping hole in the heart of a society,” (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week pointing out that famine is looming in several countries. Striking a personal note, Guterres said he could have never imagined that hunger would rise again during his time in office as Secretary-General. The WFP singled out 10 countries with the worst food crises in 2019: Yemen, Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria and Haiti. The list is expected to increase by end of this year. WFP Executive Director David Beasley told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council last April: “There are no famines yet. But I must warn you that if we don’t prepare and act now – to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade – we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months.”"

"I was out in the middle of Niger. And somebody just comes busting into our meeting, said, 'Nobel Peace Prize! Nobel Peace Prize!' And I'm like, "Well, yeah, wow, who won it?' And they're like, 'We did!' That was the greatest surprise in my life. And wow, wow, wow!"

"When you start to get involved with it, it's just like, you know, it's one of those things. You're just hooked. It's not like, 'Oh, I hope we find a cure.' There is a cure. The cure is the food – we have it. It's there. It's available. So, it's really about how we get there, you know? There was a mother that was one of the mothers of a child in the school, and she had just had a baby... I said, 'How are you feeling?' you know, and she was like, 'Ughhh.' And you realize that as mothers, the first thing that we do with our babies is, we would do anything to feed them. And when that goes wrong, I mean, you can't explain it if you don't know what that feels like, if you can't give your baby milk, if you're not producing. It's the fundamental fear, if we cannot feed our children. You know, when you see someone suffering of something that is as simple as a little bit of food, it's just, you know, you can help that. There's no greater kind of contribution, I think, than being able to at least try to help as many people as you can."

"The latest fighting in Yemen has exacerbated the world’s worst humanitarian crisis — where the United Nations warns about 80% of Yemen’s 30 million residents are in need of assistance. World Food Programme director David Beasley said Friday that Yemen tops the list of nations at risk of famine due to war, disease and the climate crisis. David Beasley: “We are now looking, literally, at 2021 being the worst humanitarian crisis year since the beginning of the United Nations. … We have to prioritize, as I say, the icebergs in front of the Titanic. We’ve really got to give priority to famine, destabilization and migration.” Beasley predicts a record 235 million people around the world will need humanitarian aid next year — a 40% increase from 2020. The World Food Programme will receive the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, International Human Rights Day."

"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."

"Oxfam has urged all three vaccine manufacturers to share their technical know-how with the World Health Organization (WHO) to leverage the world’s full manufacturing capacity and support regionally based production as a means to increase the overall supply, reduce on-the-ground distributional challenges, and respond to the desire of low- and middle-income countries to produce doses for their own citizens. “If Moderna worked with us, we could submit the WHO’s COVID-19 Vaccine mRNA Technology Transfer hub’s vaccine for approval at least one year sooner, which would save lives, decrease the risk of variants, and reduce the pandemic’s economic toll,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, in his unprecedented presentation of the Oxfam resolution to Moderna shareholders via a pre-recorded statement. “We urge Moderna to share technology and know-how with the WHO hub and commit to not enforcing patents for COVID-19 and other essential vaccines in countries hosting the WHO hub and spokes. We also urge them to offer training to scientists working on those efforts through the Moderna mRNA access program.”"

"President Trump announced at the White House coronavirus news briefing in the Rose Garden on Tuesday that the United States will immediately halt all funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), saying it had put "political correctness over lifesaving measures." Also at the briefing, the president said plans to ease the national economic shutdown were being finalized, and that he would be "authorizing governors to reopen their states to reopen as they see fit." At the same time, Trump made clear that he was not going to put "any pressure" on governors to reopen."

"The delays the WHO experienced in declaring a public health emergency cost valuable time tremendous amounts of time; more time was lost in the delay it took to get a team of international experts and to examine the outbreak which we wanted to do which they should have done. The inability of the WHO to obtain virus samples to this date has deprived the scientific community of essential data. New data that emerges across the world on a daily basis points to the unreliability of the initial reports and the world received all sorts of false information about transmission and mortality. The silence of the WHO on the disappearance of scientific researchers and doctors and new restrictions on the sharing of research into the origins of COVID-19 in the country of origin is deeply concerning especially when we put up by far the largest amount of money, not even close. Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China's lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained as a source with very little death, very little death, and certainly very little death by comparison. This would have saved thousands of lives and avoided worldwide economic damage. Instead the WHO willingly took China's assurances to face value, and they took it just at face value and defended the actions of the Chinese government, even praising China for its so-called transparency. I don't think so. The WHO pushed China's misinformation about the virus, saying it was not communicable, and there was no need for travel bans. They told us when we put on our travel ban a very strong travel ban, there was no need to do it. Don't do it; they actually fought us. The WHO's reliance on China's disclosures likely caused a 20-fold increase in cases worldwide, and it may be much more than that."

"Why have states placed so little confidence in the WHO, and why have they not accorded the WHO a central role in coordinating the global response to the pandemic? In China, the epidemic effectively paralyzed the country both politically and economically. Freezing economic production and trade has never been practiced on such a scale, and the outcome has been a very serious economic and financial crisis in China. Germany, France and the United States most of all, thus largely hesitated in order to keep their economies running as long as possible — or, more precisely, to balance off economic and imperatives based on how the situation unfolds from "day to day," rather than heeding the more dire, long-term forecasts."

"According to the , the choice to abandon systematic testing and contract tracing, which were effective in Korea and Taiwan, was a major mistake that contributed to the spread of the virus in virtually every country. The ultimate cause of this alarming delay were strategic choices. Italy was quickly forced to adopt a strategy of absolute confinement in order to halt the epidemic, as China had previously done. Other countries waited far too long to react, largely on the basis of the and crypto-Darwinian strategy of "herd immunity." Boris Johnson's United Kingdom was entirely passive in its initial approach, and other countries equivocated and delayed their restrictive measures, such as France and Germany, not to mention the United States. By adopting a strategy of "mitigation," or epidemic delay by "," these countries have de facto renounced any serious attempt to keep the virus under control from the start through the use of systematic screening and general confinement of the population, as was done in and Hubei province. According to the forecasts of the German and French governments, the strategy of collective immunity necessitates 50 to 80 percent contamination across the entire population. This amounts to accepting the deaths of hundreds of thousands — even millions — of people who are supposedly the "most fragile." All the while, the WHO's recommendations were very clear: states must not abandon systematic screening and contact tracing of anyone who tests positive for the virus."

"The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global health, social and economic crisis. Historical comparisons are few, particularly in recent decades. This tragedy constitutes nothing less than a trial for all humanity. [...] The WHO has been financially weakened for the past several decades, and is now largely dependent on private donors, with 80 percent of its funding coming from private businesses or foundations. But despite its weakened condition, the WHO could have still provided an initial framework for global cooperation in the fight against the pandemic, not only because of the reliable information it had gathered since the beginning of January, but also because its recommendations for radical and early control of the epidemic were ultimately correct."

"The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that administers Wikipedia, announced today a collaboration to expand the public’s access to the latest and most reliable information about COVID-19. The collaboration will make trusted, public health information available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license at a time when countries face continuing resurgences of COVID-19 and social stability increasingly depends on the public’s shared understanding of the facts...Wikipedia volunteer editors, many of whom are from the medical community, have been creating, updating, and translating Wikipedia articles with information from reliable sources about the pandemic. As one of the top ten sites in the world, studies have shown that Wikipedia is one of the most frequently viewed sources for health information."

"In the past two weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 outside China has increased 13-fold, and the number of affected countries has tripled. [...] Thousands more are fighting for their lives in hospitals. In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher. [...] We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic."

"Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease, and so the R&D Blueprint explicitly seeks to enable cross-cutting R&D preparedness that is also relevant for an unknown “Disease X” as far as possible."

"Climate change is the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century."

"Infectious diseases do not employ multinational public relations firms. There are no front groups to promote the spread of cholera. Mosquitoes have no lobbyists. The evidence presented here suggests that tobacco is a case unto itself, and that reversing its burden on global health will be not only about understanding addiction and curing disease, but, just as importantly, about overcoming a determined and powerful industry."

"How did we get here [with complex and restrictive copyright laws]? Well, it starts with an organization called WIPO, which is for copyright what Mordor is for evil in Middle Earth."