The candidates to lead the United Nations all have views on AI policy, but the institution’s survival will depend on something harder: deploying it from within. The field is uneven. The world is already being reorganized around artificial intelligence. At the UN, the conversation still focuses largely on regulation: frameworks, safeguards, treaties, governance principles. Those…
A female secretary-general would not automatically transform the UN’s record on women’s rights, Lisa Marie Vickers argues, but after 80 years of male leadership, her appointment would carry urgent symbolic weight for an institution built on equality. Campaigning is in full swing as nominated candidates compete to be the tenth Secretary-General of the United Nations….
The race to succeed UN Secretary‑General António Guterres is often treated as a personnel question. In reality, it is something far more consequential: a test of whether the office of secretary‑general can still matter politically at all. When Norway’s Trygve Lie, the first secretary‑general of the United Nations, welcomed his successor Dag Hammarskjöld in…
Reformers hoped geopolitical divisions would weaken the P5’s hold over the secretary-general selection. Instead, the veto powers are closing ranks. The selection process for the new United Nations secretary-general is not just a competition between the individual candidates. It is also a contest for power among the UN’s member states. On one side of this…
Humanitarian assistance has kept millions afloat. But without a political strategy that reaches beyond the Taliban, Afghanistan’s deeper crisis will remain unresolved. Five years after the Taliban returned to power, millions of Afghans remain trapped in overlapping humanitarian, economic, political, and human rights crises. While international attention has shifted to other global crises, Afghanistan has…
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…
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…
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…
By opening the door for banks to trade loans, developing countries could unlock billions in untapped capital, giving small businesses and everyday borrowers a fair shot at growth. In much of the developing world, the story is frustratingly familiar: small businesses with big ambitions can’t get the financing they need, and individuals with valuable property…
We are definitely not on track to reach the climate targets of the Paris Agreement. In about two years, humanity will have used up the remaining carbon budget – that is, the emissions that can still be released to the atmosphere – consistent with the goal of keeping global warming to below 1.5°C. Yet, despite…
A dual-currency model with gold-backed banknotes could help developing nations boost stability, reduce dollar reliance, and strengthen financial sovereignty Before President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s April 5, 1933, recall of gold-backed currency, the U.S. Treasury had been circulating gold Certificates since 1865. These notes were backed by equal gold coin and redeemable upon demand. When the…
