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December 29:Speaking to press outside his
Mar-a-Lago resort club in Palm Beach, he said the organisation “caused problems”
instead of solving them.
The President-elect said: “There is such tremendous potential, but [the UN] is
not living up [to it]. When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They
don't. They cause problems.
“So if it lives up to the potential it's a great thing. And if it doesn't it's a
waste of time and money.”
The comments come after Mr Trump slammed the UN in the wake of last week’s
Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank,
calling for the US to block the move.
December 29: Donald Trump can fix the United
Nations. Not defund it.
Trump is spot-on when he spoke about the need for the U.N. to live up to its
potential, even if his comments were less than nuanced. The U.N.'s greatest
failures are of epic proportion and attract news coverage internationally. The
world vividly remembers the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, which took place
under the cover of U.N. peacekeepers. The U.N. has
refused to be accountable for its role in importing cholera into Haiti,
which killed more than 10,000 and sickened hundreds of thousands. It has yet to
get a handle on sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers, such as
reports earlier this year from the Central African Republic where more than
100 girls in just one local area were abused. And the U.N. inquiry into the
scandal around the
Iraqi oil-for-food program concluded that more than half of the 4,500
companies participating paid kickbacks enabling Saddam Hussein to pocket $1.8
billion – and he earned another $10.9 billion through illegal oil smuggling. ...
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/world-report/articles/2016-12-29/donald-trump-can-fix-the-united-nations-not-defund-it
April 4: U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.),
Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following
statement Tuesday after the Trump administration announced that it has cut off
U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA):
August 22: Trump Says He Could Save U.N.
Nearly $1 Billion ... [he] says the perpetually cash-strapped organization has
massively overvalued the preliminary projected cost for renovating and expanding
its 50-year-old historic headquarters on the East River in Manhattan.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80604
September 19: ... while the UN chamber is
antiseptic, and suffocated in the rituals of diplomacy, Trump brought his
singular theatrics [to his first U.N. meeting].
From a spot where dictators and demagogues have harangued delegates, including
Cuba's Fidel Castro and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President, dipped into
his Twitter vernacular to roast North Korea's Kim Jong Un as "Rocket Man," to
brand terrorists "losers" and warned that some nations were "going to Hell."
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/politics/donald-trump-united-nations/index.html
September 19: Trump at UN: 'Rocket Man' Kim
Jong Un 'is on a suicide mission'
"The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to
defend itself and its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy
North Korea," Trump tells the United Nations General Assembly.
September 19: "The goals of the United
Nations are to foster peace and promote global cooperation. Today, the President
used it as a stage to threaten war," said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. "He
missed an opportunity to present any positive actions the UN could take with
respect to North Korea, and he launched a diatribe against Iran, again offering
no pathway forward."
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/politics/donald-trump-united-nations/index.html
September 20: Trump's Indecisive,
Ill-Prepared Debut at the United Nations ... His UN speech was one of the least
effective, weakest, and indecisive ever given by an American president. It’s not
that it failed against some arbitrary standard set by the foreign-policy
establishment he despises. It failed on its own terms. And how it failed tells
us something important about where his foreign policy is headed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/trump-united-nations-iran-jcpoa-north-korea/540501/
September 20: "It certainly was, in many ways quite a groundbreaking
speech," said Nile Gardiner, an
analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, praising Trump's "assertive and
aggressive" delivery and for setting a tone different from the "deferential"
multilateral doctrine of the Obama administration.
Oct 21:United Nations
Secretary-General António Guterres met Friday with United States President
Donald Trump and discussed, among others, tensions in the Korean
Peninsula and the fight against terrorism ... “The
two committed to work together to address these and other common challenges in
the coming months" ...
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57936#.Wj4XF91MFkg
December 2: Trump pulls United States out of
UN migration pact ... The United States has announced it is withdrawing
from the Global Compact on Migration. The non-binding UN migration pact was
meant to boost international cooperation on migration issues.
http://www.dw.com/en/trump-pulls-united-states-out-of-un-migration-pact/a-41629962
December 19: Internet roasts ‘schoolyard
bully’ Nikki Haley after she threatens to ‘take names’ during a UN vote ...
“At the UN we’re always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a
decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we
don’t expect those we’ve helped to target us. On Thurs there’ll be a vote
criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names,”
the diplomat tweeted Tuesday.
December 20: Congress calls Trump’s bluff on
threat to cut aid over UN vote ... US President Donald Trump’s threat to cut
foreign aid to countries that criticize his
position on Jerusalem at the United Nations is drawing fierce condemnation
from key Democratic lawmakers, raising doubts that Congress would allow him to
carry it out.
Trump suggested today that any country voting in favor of Thursday's nonbinding
resolution opposing the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel
could lose US foreign assistance, potentially putting vulnerable US allies in
the Middle East at risk. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, after sending
letters to UN members warning them of consequences if they vote the wrong way,
followed suit today with a
tweet endorsing the president's statement of "Let them vote against us,
we'll save a lot."
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/12/congress-democrats-reject-trump-threat-foreign-aid-jerusalem.html
December 21:
United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s recent threat — that the United States
would be “taking names” of those who vote against it in the U.N. General
Assembly — summed up everything liberals and the foreign-policy establishment
hate about the Trump administration. That President Trump subsequently embraced
Haley’s idea in a tweet, and threatened to cut off aid to those who thumb their
nose at their American benefactor in U.N. votes, only made it worse. To those
who remember President Obama’s devotion to multilateralism and support for
international institutions, Haley’s and Trump’s statements reek of arrogance and
contempt for world opinion.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454856/nikki-haley-taking-names-un-right
December 21: US seeks to buy other
countries' wills with its dollars, Erdoğan says ahead of UN vote on Jerusalem
...
Ankara has strongly condemned the U.S.'s aggressive diplomacy of threats and
undemocratic attitude toward allies, saying that the "will of the people cannot
be bought with dollars."
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan criticized the U.S. Thursday, saying that
Turkey's decision on the issue is clear and no country should sell its will for
a few dollars.
December 26: ... cuts to the U.N. budget are
typical: The
2016-2017 budget [under Obama] was roughly $400 million lower than the final
appropriations for 2014-2015, which was
2.9 percent lower
than the previous biennium's budget.
The U.N. budget is negotiated every two years and is decided by consensus rather
than a vote. Wealthier countries that pay the lion's share of the budget — the
U.S., Japan, Canada and EU members — routinely push for the budget to be
lowered.
The Trump administration said Sunday that the United Nations budget has been
reduced for the coming year, and it framed any cuts as the product of U.S.
negotiation [for which the Trump administration took credit].
June 19: U.S. Plans to Withdraw From UN
Human Rights Council Today
The 47-member council, based in Geneva and created in 2006, began its latest
session on Monday with a broadside against President
Donald Trump’s immigration policy by the UN’s high commissioner for human
rights. He called the policy of separating children from parents crossing the
southern border illegally “unconscionable.”
September 25: UN audience literally bursts
out laughing at Trump’s speech
They didn’t take the president’s bragging very seriously.
One of President Trump’s favorite attacks on his political opponents is to say
that the world is “laughing” at the United States. But on Tuesday, during
Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly, the assembled world
notables literally laughed at him.
September 25: The gathered world leaders --
or at least some of them -- were laughing at Trump's contention that he had done
more in two years than any previous American administration ever.
Which makes some sense given that the claim seems, on its face ridiculous. There
was Abraham Lincoln's management of the Civil War, Ulysses Grant's stewardship
of the country through Reconstruction, Woodrow Wilson's work to repair the world
community following World War I, [FDR's work before and during WWII], Truman's
work to do the same post-World War II, Ronald Reagan's steering of the country
though the Cold War ... I mean, the list goes on and on.
December 13: Elliott
Broidy, Former Top Trump Fundraiser, Hit With Another Setback in Qatar Lawsuit
Elliott Broidy's case against veteran UN diplomat tossed
Broidy claims he was targeted by Qatar and its agents over his efforts to shift
U.S. policy against Gulf nation
A former top fundraiser for U.S. President Donald Trump suffered another legal
setback on Friday in his efforts to pin the
blame on Qatar for a hack of his emails, as a judge tossed his lawsuit
against a veteran
United Nations diplomat.
Elliott Broidy, a businessman who held senior finance posts in Trump’s 2016
presidential campaign and his inaugural committee, sued Jamal Benomar in July,
claiming he orchestrated the dissemination of hacked emails to media outlets.
Benomar, a British citizen born in Morocco and a former U.N. special envoy for
Yemen, had
denied involvement and sought to get the lawsuit thrown out by asserting
diplomatic immunity, a status confirmed by the Trump administration last month.
December 26: North and
South Korea Hope to Leave Hostility Behind With a New Railroad Linking the
Peninsula
North and South Korean officials took part in a ceremonial groundbreaking
Wednesday, signing a wooden railroad tie and linking the tracks of what the
nations hope will one day be a train system to bring prosperity to Northeast
Asia.
However, the railway will not become a reality if U.S.-led sanctions against
North Korea persist. Officials had to obtain United Nations approval just to
hold Wednesday’s ceremony since it required transporting vehicles across the
border to the North Korean border town of Kaesong.
http://fortune.com/2018/12/26/north-korea-south-korea-railroad-sanctions/
FDI, comprising cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), intra-company loans
and investment in start-up projects abroad, is a bellwether of globalisation and
a potential sign of growth of corporate supply chains and future trade ties.
But it can also go into reverse as companies
pull investments out of foreign projects or repatriate earnings.
January 21:A US transgender activist is stuck in Sweden.
The UN wants to investigate.
... when she tried to renew her passport, she says officials told her that she
had obtained it fraudulently because she didn’t provide documentation including
her gender at birth.
Askini's congresswoman, Democrat Pramila Jayapal, intervened to get Askini a
temporary passport. Askini went to Sweden, where her ex-husband lives.
Six months later, she’s still there. Her Swedish visa is about to expire. And
she can’t come back to the US.
“I don’t have a US passport, I cannot leave the state of Sweden and I don’t have
Swedish citizenship,” she says.
Askini turned to international authorities for
help, filing a human rights complaint with the United Nations. But the State
Department won’t respond to the UN’s requests to investigate.
“I just thought they were being silent on my issue,” Askini says.
But as it turns out, the US State Department hasn’t responded to requests from
the UN to investigate human rights complaints since May, according to a
report in The Guardian. Thirteen requests haven’t been answered, including
one asking to look into family separations at the US-Mexico border. That’s a
departure from previous administrations.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-01-21/us-transgender-activist-stuck-sweden-un-wants-investigate
