Brain Surgery at Your Fingertips
A UNITAR-backed platform is bringing surgical training to frontline health workers around the world. …
Brain Surgery at Your Fingertips
A UNITAR-backed platform is bringing surgical training to frontline health workers around the world. An online training platform developed with UNITAR is seeking to widen access to surgical education for health workers around the world. Launched in 2023, SURGhub now has more than 30,000 users and offers courses ranging from speaking up in the…
What Will It Take to Elect a Woman UN Secretary-General?
The race to choose the next Secretary-General has no shortage of qualified women. The question is whether the UN’s most powerful states are prepared to support a woman to lead. In 2016, seven of the 13 candidates for secretary-general were women. The UN still chose a man. This year, as the UN marks its 80th…
The World Urban Forum Wants to Solve the World’s Big City Housing Problem
BY 2030, 3 billion people will need access to adequate housing—an unmet need that amounts to roughly 96,000 new affordable, accessible homes every day. By 2030, 3 billion people will need access to adequate housing—an unmet need that amounts to roughly 96,000 new affordable, accessible homes every day, according to UN-Habitat. That gap…
Two Afternoons, Two Futures: What Australia’s Response to a Massacre Can Teach a Grieving US
After the Port Arthur massacre, Australia rewrote its gun laws in 12 days. The United States, after decades of mass shootings, is still trapped in grief without action. On a Sunday afternoon in the Broad Arrow Cafe at Port Arthur, Australia, the former penal colony on the Tasmanian coast had become a tourist destination…
Strike a Pixel: AI Models Are Taking Over Fashion, for Better and for Worse
AI is changing fashion fast, with the potential to reduce waste and improve inclusivity or simply make a complex industry more efficient at scale. Fashion has always been obsessed with the latest thing. Hemlines rise and fall, colors cycle in and out, trends appear, vanish, and reappear decades later. But the latest disruption isn’t…
From Addis to America, a Diaspora Finds Its Punchline
For Ethiopian and Eritrean comics, family migration routes, refugee histories and diaspora restaurants have become the infrastructure of a new transnational scene. On a breezy Tuesday evening, lanky Simone Shiferaw—whose stage name is Chifforobe—is pacing outside a restaurant on U Street. Positioning himself before commuters emerging from a nearby Metro station, he hands out…
In the Streets of Europe, Iran’s Future Is Already Being Contested
As diaspora crowds cheered Khamenei’s death, rival opposition camps are still battling over what comes next. From above the crowd, a man’s voice booms out from a speaker like thunder. He chants, slowly at first, in Farsi, “We are a proud and great nation. We will reclaim Iran from tyranny!” and the people standing…
As the Olympic Truce Is Broken Again, a New Index Names and Shames Violators
As war broke out during the Paralympic Games, a new initiative seeks to name and shame violators of the millennia-old Olympic Truce. The final event of the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics featured a fiercely competitive hockey game between arguably the two best men’s teams. On February 22, 2026, the United States upset…
The New Face of Syria at the UN Ambassador Ibrahim Olabi and Syria’s Diplomatic Reset
From a legal activist to the Security Council Chamber, the young ambassador now carries Syria’s bid to turn revolution into a diplomatic renewal. At 32, Syria’s new Ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim Olabi, speaks with the gravity of someone shaped by upheaval. “The war made us really age,” he told Envoy in an…
Trump’s Board of Peace Has More in Common With Davos Than the U.N.
While many people initially compared it to the U.N., it might actually be closer to the World Economic Forum in Spirit and in Structure. In January 2026, President Donald Trump used the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, to formally ratify the charter of his Board of Peace, placing the initiative before…
The Board of What?
Security Council diplomats backed a Gaza reconstruction body. What emerged became Donald Trump’s most powerful personal institution yet. It had been two years of conflict with no end in sight, and diplomats came to the inevitable conclusion that one country, and one country only, had the power to stop the hostilities in Gaza:…
How Europe can Help Build A New World of Order
The current international order is under strain. Article 109 offers a chance to renew it by updating the U.N. Charter. World leaders are ringing the death knell of the international order. The current order’s largest backer, the United States, seems to have abandoned it – instead seeking to reshape international relations in a new…
Europe’s Voice at the UN Unity or Strategic Anxiety?
At United Nations Headquarters, cocktail receptions are rarely where geopolitical tremors become visible. Diplomatic gatherings in New York tend to follow a familiar script. Journalists attend them regularly, knowing that behind the polite conversations and glasses of wine, there is rarely much substance. Speeches are usually cautious, carefully calibrated not to disturb the delicate balance…
A Zone of Peace Prepares for War
As the Donroe Doctrine shakes up Latin America, Brazil rethinks its longtime security policy. The capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela last January sent political shockwaves in Brazil, some of which may reverberate for years to come. Hours after the military operation, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ordered his generals to assess the…
Diplomacy, Demand, and the Global Stage: Hospitality at the Intersection of Policy and Mega-Events
As global mobility becomes increasingly shaped by geopolitics, the hospitality sector is no longer driven solely by demand, it is influenced by policy, perception, and access. For Alpan Keskin, Founder o WL Hospitality Investments, this shift is most visible during moments when diplomacy and tourism converge. From the annual influx tied to the United Nations…
From Darkness to Dignity Why Light Is the First Step Out of Poverty
Tonight, many of us will walk around our homes and have the luxury of flipping on a light switch, reading a book to our children before bed, or having a porch light on for security without thinking twice. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, hundreds of millions of families will ration light or spend…
