Nations of the world have taken giant steps in recent decades to build international structures and strengthen institutions to deal with mass human rights abusers. At almost every stage, Navi Pillay, a South African lawyer, was there, advancing the rights of political detainees and the protection and status of women.
Author: Barbara Crossette
Barbara Crossette is the senior consulting editor and writer for PassBlue and the United Nations correspondent for The Nation. She is also a board member of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a contribtor to the Oxford Handbook on the United Nations.
Previously, Crossette was the UN bureau chief for The New York Times from 1994 to 2001 and before that its chief correspondent in Southeast Asia and South Asia. She is the author of "So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas," "The Great Hill Stations of Asia" and a Foreign Policy Association study, "India Changes Course," in the Foreign Policy Association's "Great Decisions 2015."
Crossette won the George Polk award for her coverage in India of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and the 2010 Shorenstein Prize for her writing on Asia.
Surrogate Motherhood as a Business: New York State Defies a Global Trend
In the middle of the night on April 2, 2020, buried in a 400-page state budget, a provision to make commercial surrogacy legal in New York was adopted despite a campaign against the move by leading advocates of women’s reproductive health and rights.
Democracy Depends on Women’s Empowerment, Kamala Harris Says in Her U.N. Debut
Addressing a mostly virtual annual session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the U.N.’s key advocate and protector of women’s rights since 1947, Harris—the first woman to rise to the vice presidency—presented a broad view of rights and freedoms held by the Biden administration.
What the World Learned About Women’s Talents in a Hellish Year
It was a tough and discouraging year, 2020, for women around the world as they prepare for the 12-day annual session of the Commission on the Status of Women.
Rest in Power: The UN’s First Feminist, ‘Peg’ Snyder
Peg Snyder, the founding director of Unifem, now folded into UN Women, died on Jan. 26, 2021, after a brief illness while staying in Syracuse, N.Y., near her relatives and the city where she was born.
U.S. Aid Returns to UNFPA Amid Efforts to End Global Gag Rule Permanently
“UNFPA’s work is essential to the health and well-being of women around the world and directly supports the safety and prosperity of communities around the globe, especially in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic.”
Feminists Grade U.N. Secretary-General Guterres With a ‘B’ for 2020
In 2016, the Feminist U.N. Campaign produced a six-point agenda for the incoming secretary-general that it uses as a base for annual report cards measuring Guterres’s performance since he took office on Jan. 1, 2017.
Overall, Guterres’s cumulative grade for 2017 was C+. In 2018 and 2019, he moved to B- . The report card for 2020 gives him a B.
For Women in Politics Globally, the Job Can Mean Abuse, Jail or Death
The Inter-Parliamentary Union reports increasing attacks on lawmakers globally, with women suffering more disproportionately than men.
Sometimes all it takes is a woman’s eagerness to become a political activist to put her in mortal danger—especially if she fights for women’s rights.
Rights Advocates Rejoice as the New Biden Team Is Assembled
Biden’s White House staff is falling into place, and Cabinet members are being announced: Antony Blinken will be Biden’s secretary of state; Linda Thomas-Greenfield will become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Michèle Flournoy will be secretary of defense; John Kerry will focus on climate change; Alejandro Mayorkas has been nominated secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; Avril Haines has been nominated for director of national intelligence; and Jake Sullivan will be the national security adviser.
United Nations Population Fund Thriving as It Praises an American Who Kept U.S. Interest Alive
In the rubble of what’s left of American commitments to international organizations, one survivor is doing well. The United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, the perennial target of Republican politicians and presidents since the 1980s, is thriving.