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United Nations

Defending Rights And Dissent Weighs In On Terrorism Definition

Since the 1980s, defending the right to political expression has increasingly meant challenging the use of counterterrorism powers to stifle political speech. In 1999, we published Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security. Written by two eminent legal scholars, David Cole and James Dempsey, it analyzed how counterterrorism laws and mandates were being used to abridge core rights to political expression. This work was necessitated by continuous revelations throughout the 1980s and 1990s as to how in the U.S. counterterrorism authorities were used to monitor domestic political speech, as well as the dramatic implementation of new counterterrorism laws in the 1990s that criminalized speech and humanitarian activities formerly understood to be protected by core expressive rights.

Security Council Shamefully Grants Colonial Domination Over Palestine

In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly committed the UN’s original sin when it partitioned Palestine to create Israel. This launched the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous people, and the establishment of a settler colonial state. Now, 78 years later, the UN Security Council has committed the UN’s second cardinal sin. It enshrined Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, put its imprimatur on Israel’s genocide, and granted colonial control over the lives of the Palestinians to the United States, which has aided and abetted the genocide.

The United Nations Embraces Colonialism

More than two years into the genocide in Palestine, the UN Security Council has finally acted. But rather than acting to enforce international law, protect the victims, and hold the perpetrators accountable, it adopted a resolution that openly flouts key provisions of international law, disempowers and further punishes the victims, and rewards and empowers the perpetrators.  Most disturbingly, it hands control of Gaza and the survivors of the genocide over to the United States, a co-perpetrator of the genocide, and provides for the participation of the Israeli regime in decision making.

Growing Global Solidarity To Demand Protection Of Palestinians Manifested On Day Of Action

On November 17, social movements in 13 countries held actions in solidarity with Colombia and its President, Gustavo Petro, who has faced retaliation by the United States for his statements and actions in support of Palestine. Petro has announced that he will introduce a Uniting for Peace resolution at the United Nations General Assembly to create a multinational protection force for Palestinians and impose sanctions and a weapons blockade in order to end the genocide and liberate Palestine from the illegal Israeli occupation. Since he announced his intention to introduce the resolution on September 2, the U.S. government has revoked Petro's visa, targeted him with sanctions, punitively increased tariffs on Colombia, and is even threatening military action against the country.

The Legal Basis For And US Violations Of Our Right To Health Care

The United States was scheduled for its regular review of its human rights violations by the United Nations Human Rights Council on November 7, but it refused to cooperate. As part of the process, activists in the US submitted a shadow report last April called "The Rights to Life and Health: How financing affects the right to health care in the US." Clearing the FOG speaks with Martha "Marti" Schmidt, a human rights expert and activist, about the findings in the shadow report, the legal basis supporting the human right to health care, the problems with the current healthcare system in the United States and what type of system would honor our right to health care. Schmidt also discusses successful healthcare systems in other countries and the importance of showing solidarity with countries that are targeted by the United States.

COP30: Climate Course-Correction Or Another Collision Course?

The 30th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) will take place in Belém, a remote, underdeveloped, and poor region of the Brazilian Amazon. Delegates from over 190 countries, NGOs, indigenous representatives, and Brazil’s President Lula, alongside COP President André Corrêa do Lago, will all participate in this year’s high-stakes climate negotiations. Missed Targets And Weak Ambition – It’s Now Or Never With 2024 confirmed as the hottest year ever on record, the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and the massive financial shortfalls left by lacklustre negotiations at COP29, this year’s climate talks are pivotal. A 2024 report by the UN revealed that current policies put the planet on track to reach a catastrophic 3.1°C warming by 2100

US Human Rights Record Under Fire After Boycott Of UN Review

On November 7, the US became only the second country in history – after ‘Israel’ in 2013 – to skip its scheduled Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations. (ISHR) The Universal Periodic Review is designed to promote and protect human rights in every UN member country. The UPR was established in 2006, and occurs every four to five years. Its aim is to review each of the 193 UN member states’ human rights record. The most recent review session took place on Friday, at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. There was no US representative present. This has shocked the international human rights community and also sparked widespread criticism and concern. The move ends nearly two decades of unbroken US participation, and comes at a time when there has been growing concerns over America’s human rights record.

The United States Violates The Human Right To Health

Health care activists in the U.S. have a huge struggle to get the corporate media to take the human right to health seriously. The corporate media reports on some injuries and deaths, but their doom and gloom scenarios typically conclude nothing can be changed in this private, insurance-controlled system, which doesn’t work for the people. Despite the difficult time we’re in, with millions lacking access to health care, it’s an opportunity for health care activists to increase efforts for a public, not for profit, universal system in the U.S. One way is to use the international human rights system organized through the United Nations to broadcast our message to the rest of the world and to shame the U.S.

Trump Failed To Pressure Countries To Support Illegal Blockade Of Cuba

A study by the firm Reputation Lab polled people in 60 major countries, and found that the United States has a very bad reputation. The US ranking fell from what was already a low rank of 30 out of 60 in 2024 to an even worse 48th place in 2025. A clear demonstration of the political isolation of the US government can be seen in votes at the United Nations. The vast majority of countries on Earth voted at the UN General Assembly on 29 October to demand an end to the illegal US blockade of Cuba, which has been maintained in blatant violation of international law for more than six decades. 165 countries, representing 85.5% of the UN’s 193 member states, voted in support of a resolution that emphasized the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”.

UN Human Rights Chief Condemns ‘Unacceptable’ US Strikes

On Friday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk issued the first clear United Nations (UN) condemnation of US military strikes against small boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, calling them unacceptable and demanding they stop. “These attacks, and their mounting human cost, are unacceptable,” Turk said. “The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them.” “Over 60 people have reportedly been killed in a continuing series of attacks carried out by US armed forces against boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific since early September, in circumstances that find no justification in international law,” he stated.

How To Feed The World And Save The Planet

Awareness about the destructiveness of the global food economy has become so widespread that large institutions are now forced to address it in the open. At the FAO Summit, the UN hyped a “transformation” of the global food system, and gave the floor to voices critical of globalised supply chains and corporate-led farming. Even big businesses have become remarkably proficient at speaking the language of “regenerative,” “diverse,” “local solutions” and “farmer-led.” But, in today’s world, rhetoric has been divorced from reality. Sure enough, if you follow the money instead of the language, you see a very different kind of transformation underway.

We Must Reject Normalization Of A Genocidal Regime And Impunity For War Crimes

Israel is a rogue regime, deeply violent, fundamentally racist and unconstrained. It has developed a kind of arrogance that comes out of absolute impunity guaranteed by the West. That's why they not only deployed a murderous attack in a sovereign country against people who were there to negotiate with them, but they also carried out acts of aggression against Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and in the territorial Waters of Tunisia and Malta. This is a rogue regime that is posing a threat across Western Asia and beyond to the broader world. It's a regime that has launched a transnational terror attack in Lebanon with booby-trapped pagers. It is a regime that occupies territory in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. It is a regime that has attacked the UN itself.

Beware Trump’s Ceasefire Without United Nations Action

As President Donald Trump surely intended, his “20-point Gaza plan” succeeded in upstaging calls by many other world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly for concrete, coordinated U.N.-led measures to force Israel to end its criminal genocide in Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestine. Trump’s White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sept. 29 coincided with the last day of the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, where Trump had met with eight Arab and Muslim leaders at the U.N. and won their support for a proposed plan for Gaza. In a textbook bait-and-switch, Trump then allowed the Israelis to significantly alter his plan before he unveiled it to the world at his meeting with Netanyahu, but pretended it was the same plan that the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and other countries had endorsed.

Power And Justice

Those were an eventful few days as the General Assembly convened at the United Nations Secretariat in New York Sept. 22. France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco and Andorra formally recognized the state of Palestine on the first day of the General Debate, Sept. 23. Britain, Canada, Australia and Portugal had done so two days earlier. With Spain, New Zealand, Finland, Ireland, Norway and other nations also recognizing, virtually the whole of the Western bloc except the United States now accepts Palestine as a sovereign state. The imperium fades further into its corner. Always good. And eventful days have followed all the new endorsements of the sovereignty of the Palestinian people. President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, presented a grandly titled Gaza Peace Plan at the White House on Monday, Sept. 29.

International Institutions Failing Palestine, People Must Stop Genocide

This week marks two years since the launch of Al Aqsa Flood and the beginning of the Israeli Occupying Forces' escalated genocide of Palestinians and forced displacement throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Clearing the FOG speaks with former senior United Nations official, human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber, about the United Nations leadership's recent efforts to suppress criticism of Israel, which led to his resignation, and the failure to take effective action to stop Israel's crimes. Mokhiber discusses the history of the United Nations, what the General Assembly can do to hold Israel accountable and, given the failures of the UN to uphold international law, what people are doing to support Palestinian liberation.
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