An olive oil plant in Tebourba, Tunisia. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization statistics show that olive oil is the country's largest commodity. The industry employs many laborers and involves small-scale farmers, but it is seasonal, so it can be problematic. DANIEL BEAUMONT/FAO

BERLIN — The fight against hunger became a primary goal of the United Nations system early on. In 1943, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt convened an international conference that reached agreement on the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization, and two years later, on Oct. 16, 1945, only days before the founding of the UN itself, 34 nations signed the constitution that established the FAO, the first specialized agency of the UN.

The agency’s goal, according to its constitution, is to raise the “levels of nutrition and standards of living of the people” by securing “improvements in the efficiency of the production and distribution of all food and agricultural products.”

Has the agency met the great expectations set out in its founding in the decades since? Is enough food produced nowadays for the world’s population?

To begin with the second question: Yes, in general there is enough food produced nowadays and will be produced in the future — FAO experts say — for the growing global population, though outside experts may not agree. And when hunger catastrophes occur, food aid will continue to be provided by the World Food Program (WFP), established in 1961 by the UN General Assembly and the Food and Agriculture Organization to offer emergency assistance.

So while famines are at least alleviated but the problems leading to repeated hunger catastrophes are not solved, the Food and Agriculture Organization has not made great progress in resolving the challenge of undernourishment. As the agency said in its 2012 report on global food insecurity, about 870 million people are chronically undernourished; the vast majority of them live in developing countries.

Has the agency failed in this respect? The answer is difficult: It has failed, but it’s the member states that are to account for the failure. From the beginning, the agency’s member states were not ready to provide it with the necessary powers to carry out its promise. Poor storage and distribution of agricultural products remain significant barriers to getting food to the neediest.

The agency’s first director-general, Sir John Boyd Orr, from Scotland, demanded in 1946 at the agency’s conference to set up a world food board authorized to stabilize “the prices of agricultural commodities on the world markets” and to “establish a world food reserve adequate for any emergency.” Sir John also wanted the agency to cooperate with like-minded UN organizations responsible for agricultural development loans and international trade policy, to ensure a coherent food security policy. The Western FAO members rejected Sir John’s proposal in 1947, and the agency was thus restricted for decades to the role of a technical organization, collecting and spreading information on food production and advising farmers.

Even when the member states were confronted time and again with food crises in the ensuing decades, they did not provide the agency with more powers. Instead, they established new organizations with specific purposes. The World Food Program, coordinating and delivering international food assistance in food emergencies, presented the main challenge for the FAO. It originally operated under the roof of the Food and Agriculture Organization but progressively separated from it and became independent.

In 1971, the World Bank established the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN Development Program, to promote research on improving food security; it is mainly staffed and financed by the World Bank. In 1977, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was established as an independent specialized agency of the UN to provide financial support to small farmers and landless people.

This dispersion of competencies and funds to different organizations weakened the Food and Agriculture Organization’s position. This development was tolerated by the industrialized member countries because they were critical of the demands of the FAO for more planning and coordinating powers. Their indifference toward the agency’s weak position was easy for them to justify, as the agency had considerable structural problems. It was far overstaffed, suffered from faulty top management, did not coordinate the work between the head office, regional centers and country representations well and lacked efficiency control.

The UN’s several food-related organizations and the World Trade Organization influenced food production and distribution without efficient coordination and strongly differing goals for several decades. It meant, in practice, that the structural causes of undernourishment in developing countries were not dealt with properly.

It took a  severe food-price crisis in 2007-2008 to shake up the FAO member states as well as the other food-related UN organizations. A rapid rise in food prices left an additional 150 million people undernourished, bringing their number to 1 billion, which incited food riots in 36 countries.

After this crisis, the agency was ready to reform and improve its relationship with other agricultural organizations. In a Latin American initiative led by Brazil and Argentina, the supporters of reform overcame  opposition from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the US to radically change the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The reform countries were  supported by nongovernmental organizations and social movements of small-scale farmers and landless people, like La Via Campesina, which represents 150 local and national rural groups in 70 countries, totaling more than 200 million farmers. The group’s role proved to be most important for the reform’s success.

In October 2009, the agency’s members then took the astonishing step to transform the insignificant FAO Committee on World Food Security (CFS) into an authoritative policy forum. This enabled the committee to become the foremost international and intergovernmental platform on food security, and included representatives from FAO, IFAD and CGIAR as well as a large number of nongovernmental organization representatives. The nongovernmental organizations are considered full members, except the right to vote is reserved to the member states only.

The document defining the Committee on World Food Security gives it a significant role in addressing questions of food security and nutrition and in promoting policy convergence and program coordination of the participating agricultural organizations.

But is a consultative organ with a broad membership really a sign of progress? As Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food has remarked: “While the CFS has no formal decision-making power . . . the collective will it expresses, with the important legitimacy of the process, will make it difficult to ignore by governments. What we are seeing with the CFS is a new breed of global governance emerging, in which the NGOs are co-authors of international law with governments and international agencies.”

The rural nongovernmental organizations have welcomed the reform in their statements as an important step forward.

That the World Food Security committee can indeed bring consultation processes between the states, and open them to others, was proven in May 2012, when it adopted important guidelines on governance of land tenure, fisheries and forests.

It is hoped that the committee will tackle other important problems of food security, like the fluctuation of food prices on the world markets, and that the organizations with decision-making powers will put the committee’s guidelines into practice. That would mean real progress for all undernourished people.

This essay is second in a series on UN specialized agencies, starting with the World Health Organization.

[This article was updated on May 14, 2013.]

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Armenia lies in one of the most seismically active regions in the world, so the Armenia National Disaster Observatory was set up, with help from the UN Development Program, to collect, analyze and interpret data to create national risk reduction policies and strategies. UNDP ARMENIA

As the United Nations relies more heavily on private sources of financing from foundations and corporations, it is important to look at how these changes affect the world body’s development aid channel. A new report examining how private donations to activities of the UN Development Program reveals both advantages — better management, for example — and concerns, such as “distorted priorities.”

In fact, “noncore” contributions to UN development organizations have grown faster than donations to “core” funds; that is, money contributed directly by member nations with few, if any, strings attached. In the report, based on an evaluation by FUNDS (the Future UN Development System), a research project of the City University of New York’s Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, the emerging picture presents questions about the nature and purposes of the UN’s future work in development.

Indeed, can the UN adapt to the increasing demands inherent in private financing, given that this is a trend most likely to continue? The FUNDS study, titled “Can the UN Adjust to the Changing Funding Landscape?” looks at the preconceptions of those working in the UN development system toward the changes afoot while underscoring the benefits and challenges of operating with noncore funds.

To read the full briefing, click here.

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The antimalaria campaign of the Pan American Health Organization, part of the UN's World Health Organization, at work in Paraguay.

Institutions of global governance are weak by design not default. As Singapore’s permanent representative in New York, I encountered senior members of the American establishment who lamented the United Nations’ poor condition. The explanation was the domination by the poor and weak states of Africa and Asia and the poor quality of its bureaucrats.

To the best of my knowledge, no one seemed aware of a longstanding Western strategy, led primarily by Washington, to keep the UN weak. Even during the cold war, when Moscow and Washington disagreed on everything, both actively conspired to keep the UN feeble: selecting pliable secretaries-general, such as Kurt Waldheim, and bullying them into dismissing or sidelining competent and conscientious international civil servants who showed any backbone; squeezing the organization’s budgets; and planting CIA and KGB agents across the UN system.

As we move into an era of great convergence, the West must fundamentally rethink its policy that its long-term interests are served by keeping institutions of global governance weak. With only 12 percent of the population of the global village and a declining share of economic and military power, the West’s long-term geopolitical interests will switch from trying to preserve its “dominance” to safeguards to protect the West’s “minority” position in a new global configuration of power.

To continue reading the essay, published by FUNDS, a research project of the City University of New York’s Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, click here.

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Li Yong, the new director-general of Unido as of June 28, 2013. He was a vice minister in China's finance ministry and replaced Kandeh Yumkella of Sierra Leone at the UN agency.

At the end of 2012, Britain withdrew its membership from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, or Unido, the most recent of several major donor countries (including the United States and Canada) to do so. Although it has had strong support from many developing countries, Unido has for many years been regarded with skepticism by some donors. But just as it seemed to be launching itself again into new initiatives, the sudden loss of 9 percent of its core financing has plunged the organization into a new period of introspection. With a new director-general, Li Yong, having been appointed this year, what does the future hold?

Unido came into being in a rather different manner from other UN organizations. Standard-setting was one of the original
rationales for many of them. For industrial standards, however, the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) was set up in 1946, independent from the UN system. It was not “brought into relation” with the UN partly because it comprised many nongovernmental interests from the beginning.

The UN proper was also called on to act as a conduit for the transfer of resources (including humanitarian) to developing countries. These funds are principally Unicef, the Office of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), both created in the aftermath of World War II, and later the UN Development Program (UNDP), World Food Program (WFP), International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Other UN organizations were created in response to development concerns with necessarily global dimensions. The rationale for the UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad, 1964) was the inequitable global trading conditions and the chronic decline in terms of trade between the global North and global South. The UN Environment Program (UNEP, 1972) was created in recognition of the global dimensions of environmental stress and the need for global solutions.

To continue reading the report, published by FUNDS, a research project of the City University of New York’s Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, click here.

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Robert Mugabe, re-elected president of Zimbabwe in July 2013. The UN's World Tourism Organization is holding its global meeting this year in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, despite allegations that the national election was a fraud.

The timing couldn’t be more awkward. The United Nations World Tourism Organization is holding its most important global gathering this year at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, from August 24 to 29, barely out of the shadow of a July 31 Zimbabwean national electiondeclared fraudulent by the defeated opposition and condemned as not credible by governments and rights groups around the world. The atmosphere continues to fester in the wake of the vote.

Zimbabwean officials are hoping for a boost in tourism for a nation in deep economic trouble created during more than three decades of authoritarian rule by President Robert Mugabe. Over the years, many thousands of  Zimbabweans have fled to neighboring Botswana and South Africa. Recent visitors to Victoria Falls have reported beggars on the roads to tourist sites.

The biennial global tourism conference, jointly sponsored and staged this year by Zimbabwe and Zambia, is expected to draw an estimated 500 or more delegates from the organization’s 155-member countries, though there are growing doubts about how many governments may not attend in the wake of the election. Even before the vote, Canada expressed regrets that the meeting was being held Zimbabwe (with a few events in Zambia, next door). Media in Britain have reported that the British government may also not attend. There has been no public statement to date from the United States.

The Victoria Falls Hotel, dating from the colonial era, in Zimbabwe.

In Geneva, the advocacy group UN Watch welcomed reports that Britain and Canada will not be sending representatives. “Amid reports of election-rigging and ongoing human rights abuses, Zimbabwe is the last country that should be legitimized by a UN summit of any kind,” Hillel Neuer, UN Watch executive director, said in a statement. “The government of Robert Mugabe has brutalized human rights activists, crushed democracy dissidents, and turned the breadbasket of Africa into a basket-case. The notion that the UN should now spin this country as a lovely tourism destination is, frankly, sickening,” he said.

The World Tourism Organization general assembly has been planned for two years, and the Victoria Falls area, a natural wonder with one of the great colonial-era grand hotels, is still a draw. “There was no impact on the preparation of the event from the elections and arrangements continue as scheduled,” Sandra Carvão, communications chief for the World Tourism Organization, said in an e-mail.

Meanwhile, the Times of Zambia reported that the Zambian Minister of Tourism and Arts said she was “happy” that the just-ended general elections in Zimbabwe did not affect preparations for the event. The minister, Sylvia Masebo, said that “the peaceful elections in Zimbabwe will complement the successful hosting of the UNWTO general assembly.” She was speaking at an interfaith religious service called to pray for a successful meeting. It will be one in a series, the newspaper said.

Helen Clark, the chief of the UN Development Program, in Bijagual, Costa Rica, visiting a community project in March 2013. ADRIANA ZUNIGA/UNDP COSTA RICA

Constant reform has characterized the United Nations Development Program throughout its existence, say the authors of two recent books on the agency. Change bespeaks an organization ready to adapt but also fundamentally uncertain about its proper role. It teeters between two sets of tensions. The first tension is between being both coordinator and competitor in the UN development system; the second tension is between exerting priorities from the center while being flexible in program countries. These tensions should be resolved and enable the UN Development Program (or UNDP) to be the UN’s human development organization.

The creation of the UN Development Program was motivated by a postwar logic that developing countries needed multilateral technical assistance to fill the gaps in institutions and skills required by what was then an ill-defined development process. With the support of the United States, the UN Expanded Program of Technical Assistance (or EPTA) was created in 1950 and a Special Fund was established in 1959 for preinvestment. When the EPTA and the Special Fund were merged into the UN Development Program in 1965, the UN development system had a consolidated source of resources to finance the technical assistance programs of the specialized agencies.

To continue reading the briefing, published by FUNDS, a research project of the City University of New York’s Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, click here.

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Monticello, the plantation home of US President Thomas Jefferson, in Charlottesville, Va. He designed the house and its grounds as well as the University of Virginia campus nearby; both are Unesco World Heritage Sites.

The United States may be ineligible to vote in Unesco’s November elections to choose members of the agency’s executive board and the next director-general, among other major matters, because the US stopped paying its dues as a member in October 2011.

Unesco, formally called the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is known for its World Heritage Site preservation program as well as science education, promotion of girls’ schooling and support of press freedom. With the government of Kenya, the agency recently made an important discovery of groundwater reserves in the drought-plagued region of Turkana, through a mapping project paid for by Japan.

Unesco is holding its biannual general conference from Nov. 5 to 20 at its base in Paris, during which its 195 members vote on who will win the vacant seats on the 58-member executive board (the US is a member till 2015; terms are four years), passes its two-year budget and decides who will become the chief for the next four years. The formal vote for director-general is Nov. 12; for the board election, Nov. 13.

This month, the board nominated Irina Bokova, a Bulgarian and Unesco’s current director-general, to another term, making her a veritable shoo-in. The other candidates were Rachad Farah, a diplomat from Djibouti who is endorsed by the Arab League, and Joseph Maila, a Lebanese academic who is a director at the Catholic Institute of Paris. Global Memo, a digital source that tracks UN elections, says that “history indicates that the General Conference will confirm the judgment of the Executive Board and that Ms. Bokova will serve an additional term as Director General of UNESCO.”

The US could lose its voting right at the conference because it has withheld its dues of 22 percent, or about $220 million, of Unesco’s 2011-2013 budget of $653 million, after the agency voted to admit Palestine as the 195th member on Oct. 31, 2011. In doing so, Unesco lost its biggest donor.

A spokeswoman for the State Department told PassBlue that the US has been working with Congress to seek a waiver so that it can pay the contributions that enable the US to keep its “vote and influence within the UN and its specialized agencies.”

This summer, President Obama nominated Crystal Nix-Hines, a lawyer who has worked for the State Department and as a news correspondent to become the next US ambassador to the UN mission at Unesco, replacing David Killion. Her nomination by the Senate has yet to be confirmed. The budget standoff in Congress could be making approval of her candidacy a low priority.

The rules to vote in Unesco’s general conference are clear: each country must be up to date with its assessed contributions; more technically, “A Member State shall have no vote in the General Conference if the total amount of contributions due from it exceeds the total amount of contributions payable by it for the current year and the immediately preceding calendar year.”

Exceptions can be made if “failure to pay is due to conditions beyond the control of the Member State.”

The conference is attended by member countries, observers for nonmember countries, intergovernmental and nongovernmental groups and others. Each country in the conference has one vote. The conference also determines the main work of Unesco.

Unesco has made up the financial shortfall left by the US nonpayment of dues and the financial crisis worldwide through other country donations and stringent budget cuts, reducing overall expenses going into this year by $136 million and relying on an emergency fund and extrabudgetary resources to meet its debt. It said that such an approach was unsustainable.

The vote to admit Palestine was contentious. In the past, the US quit its membership from Unesco in 1984 because it considered the agency bloated and diverging from US goals, but it rejoined in 2003 under President George Bush. The agency’s board just passed six resolutions condemning Israel, a bias that is a continuing source of political friction among the board. Israel also cut off its financing to Unesco in 2011. One of the resolutions stemmed from a last-minute cancellation by Israel to allow a Unesco delegation to inspect the Old City in Jerusalem.

[This article was updated on Nov. 9, 2013, to reflect revised figures from Unesco on how much the US was supposed to have paid in dues to Unesco over three years, starting in 2011 and ending in 2013.]

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As predicted by PassBlue, the United States has lost its voting rights in Unesco, since it stopped paying its dues almost exactly two years ago because of a Congressional ban on support for any UN agency that gives full membership to the Palestinians. Unesco suspended American voting rights on Nov. 8, as well as those of Israel, which also stopped paying dues two years ago as a protest to Palestine’s affiliation.

Irina Bokova, head of Unesco.

The possibility of the US, which is still a Unesco board member, losing its right to vote was first reported in PassBlue on Oct. 17. Unesco, or the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is primarily known for its designation of World Heritage Sites, protecting press freedom and supporting education for children, particularly for girls.

The US voting loss was announced on Nov. 8 during  the agency’s biannual general conference being held at its base in Paris. Among other tasks at the conference, the 195 members vote on who will win the vacant seats on the 58-member executive board (the US is a member until 2015; terms are four years). It also passes its two-year budget and formally decides who will become the chief for the next four years. The current director general, Irina Bokova, from Bulgaria, is expected to be re-elected.

Dues from the US, the largest donor to Unesco, totaled about 22 percent of the agency’s budget. The actual dollars lost to Unesco, a spokeswoman said recently, is $220 million over three years, since the US stopped paying in 2011. The agency has made budget cuts, but Bokova says the reductions and other short-term fixes cannot be sustainable.

Bokova said of the US losing its voting rights: “This is not only about financing. This is about values. This is the ‘smart power’ that is in such need today, to lay the foundations for lasting peace and sustainable development.”

The US ambassador to Unesco, David Killion, told delegates at the conference, after the suspension was announced, that Washington was “working tirelessly” to restore funding, Reuters reported.

A spokeswoman for the US State Department told PassBlue in October that the US has been working with Congress to seek a waiver so that it could pay the contributions that enable the US to keep its “vote and influence within the UN and its specialized agencies,” but so far that effort has failed.

Bokova has been mentioned as a possible contender to become the next UN secretary-general in 2017, since it is Eastern Europe’s “turn,” geographically; her current re-election to Unesco could make her an even stronger candidate for secretary-general because she remains in the UN system. Bokova earns an annual gross salary of $232,000, in line with the pay of other agency administrators, such as the UN Development Program, the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

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Nguyen Thi Phuc joined a club in her province, Nghe An, sponsored by HelpAge International and the Vietnam Association of the Elderly to push herself to get more exercise and feel less depressed. CAROLYN CANHAM

A few years ago in Ethiopia, a survey conducted for the government in the capital, Addis Ababa, discovered that 88 percent of a growing number of homeless older people as well as two-thirds of those living at home did not have enough to eat. A staggering 93 percent of all city residents over 60 had no access to a bath or a shower, and 78 percent suffered from chronic health problems.

The findings of the survey, made by HelpAge International, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, with the assistance of local Ethiopian nongovernmental groups, are echoed  in many developing countries.

For the global poor — and women most of all — there are few if any safety nets: insignificant or no social security or other pension systems and little to no family support despite traditions that were supposed to honor the old. In the worst case, the last years of their lives are marred tragically by violence. In India, a study by HelpAge India in eight cities found “elder abuse” on the rise, especially within families. Hot lines have been set up for those needing help.

Older people around the developing world have been reporting intolerable pressures from family members, particularly in societies where extended families have given way to smaller households, and the elderly may be seen as a strain on household budgets. In Mexico, a program of cash grants for older people has been introduced to alleviate financial strain on caregivers.

Sadly, however, in numerous countries advocates for the elderly say that an older person’s financial assets, if they have any, can also lead to exploitation and confiscation by relatives. In addition, even in highly developed countries, such as Finland or the United States, people living well into old age are more and more likely to be forced to sell homes or deplete savings to augment pensions or social security. Such systems are severely strained as low fertility cuts the number of working-age men and women who contribute to government plans, leading to support in the US for continued high levels of immigration.

The fear of losing ground to demography is strongest in Europe and in Japan. In countries of the global South, the demographic trend may in fact prevent the creation of such programs at all, even if there is an abundance of working-age people now, because governments have often been slow or without the resources to plan ahead.

India is one of many developing countries where communities built for the elderly rarely exist, because government policies assume that families will care for their older relatives. Even in China, where there have been efforts to provide homes and services for the rapidly increasing number of older people, authorities say they have a long way to go in most places in providing special equipment such as age-friendly accommodation, furniture and appliances, the latest walking aids or other mobility-enhancing tools. Living longer, older Chinese people are also asking for adult education and computer training so they can communicate with children and grandchildren in distant cities or abroad.

According to the UN Population Division, which produced a fact-filled wall chart on global aging in 2012, there are about 810 million people over the age of 60 in the world population, then at 7.1 billion. By 2050, there will be 2 billion older people, who will outnumber children from birth to 14 years of age for the first time in human history. By 2012, one out of every nine people had entered the post-60 age group; by 2050, the UN estimates, the proportion will be one in every five.

“The oldest old is the fastest growing age segment of the older population,” the UN Population Division reports, taking a global view. “By 2050, 20 per cent of the older population will be aged 80 years or over. The number of centenarians (aged 100 years or over) is growing even faster, and is projected to increase tenfold, from approximately 343,000 in 2012 to 3.2 million by 2050.”

There is actually good news to the background of this story. UN demographers plotting longevity report that life expectancy at birth in developing nations increased by 26 years between 1950 and 2010. The figure was lower, at 19 years, in the least-developed countries. Better health care and medical advances were responsible for saving and prolonging more lives.

Still, women, who will outnumber men for the foreseeable future, and in societies where they cannot inherit property or may even lose their marital homes and be cast into homelessness as widows, will stand to suffer most as they age. They are often prevented by custom from remarrying.

“At the world level, 81 per cent of older men are currently married, compared to only 50 per cent of older women,” the Population Division illustrated on its 2012 wall chart. “Sex differences in the proportion married are largest in least developed countries (85 per cent for men compared to 38 per cent for women), where the age difference between spouses is higher and widowers are more likely to remarry.”

Older people are not neglected by the UN, which has sponsored conferences and issued agency reports, notably by the UN Population Fund. But as the numbers of people from age 60 to 100 and beyond grow worldwide, the time is fast approaching when a more focused institutional response will be necessary — certainly for women, who are already the least able globally to cope with the hardships of old age and most in need of societal support.

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A memorial in Chile during a protest against femicide. The placards mean "Warning! Machismo Kills" in English.

For the past three decades, Costa Rica has carried out progressive steps to reduce violence against women, a major inhibitor of human and economic development in the country and throughout Latin America.

While the issue has garnered more attention among the general public in recent years, it remains intertwined in the fabric of Latin American society and difficult to quantify.

“Violence against women is rooted in centuries of discrimination,” Moni Pizani, UN Women regional director for Americas and Caribbean, told PassBlue. “It is deeply stemmed in values ​​that promote unequal relations of power between men and women at all levels of society, and the risk of occurrence depends on a number of complex and interrelated factors.”

In Brazil, for example, the number of femicides — murders of women based on their gender — has reached huge proportions, with 40,000 women killed there in the last 10 years merely for being women.

In Honduras, the overall homicide rate is 85.5 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants, and is said to be the most dangerous country for women in the world. The Observatory of Violence sector at the Institute for Democracy, Peace and Security in the country found that since the 2009 coup in Honduras, violent deaths of women has tripled, taking 606 victims in 2012. Impunity and the “disastrous” performance of the justice system increase the vulnerability of women-to-male violence, wrote Mirta Kennedy, a founding member of the Center of Women’s Studies, Honduras, in a blog post.

For example, of the 3,124 violent deaths of women in the last decade, only 5 percent have been investigated and prosecuted, Kennedy wrote. Femicide victims are most often women who are 16 to 30 years old, killed with firearms.

Statistics on femicides, sexual assaults and incidences of domestic violence can only scratch the surface of how pervasive violence against women is in Costa Rica, as the numbers ultimately fail to present the full extent of the problem.

Between 2001 and 2011, 351 femicides were committed in Costa Rica — an average rate of 1.45 per 100,000 women — according to the most recent government data. Costa Rica has a relatively low rate of femicides compared with neighboring Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Much more difficult to measure, however, are incidences of nonlethal violence against women, like domestic abuse and sexual assault, particularly because such crimes are vastly underreported. Worsening the situation in the region is the rise in violent crime as a result of increased drug trafficking and expansion of criminal groups. The ingrained “culture of machismo,” as it is known, also reinforces gender inequality, which contributes to acts of violence against women.

Given the complexity and diversity of the factors that incite violence against women in Latin America, measuring progress in its reduction is not simply a matter of looking at a selection of crime statistics, which can be incomplete and unreliable. The lack of comprehensive data — or credible data — on these issues is a problem throughout the developing world, especially since there are no globally agreed definitions of what constitutes violence in its nonlethal forms.

Ana Hidalgo, a program coordinator for Costa Rica’s National Institute of Women, a government ministry that oversees policies affecting women, said that it was improving data-gathering on violence against women by coordinating, for example, with local hospitals and courts to get more reliable data. But the institute was unable to produce conclusive evidence on trends in nonlethal violence.

Hidalgo said that on average around 50,000 women have sought legal protections from their abusers in recent years, which gives some indication of the size of the problem.

“The numbers are sometimes less, sometimes higher,” she said. “This is not necessarily good or bad. What’s important is that women need to come forward and seek help.”

Gabriela Mata, a Costa Rica-based researcher for the United Nations Development Program, said that nonlethal violence against women has typically been underreported because of fear and shame among the victims and insufficient resources for physical security, psychological counseling and legal protections.

“There needs to be a more integral approach,” Mata added, saying that “Costa Rica has been improving in comparison to many of its neighbors.” She cited numerous legislative steps aimed at dismantling the culture of misogyny and providing women with institutional support to speak out and report violence against them.

This begins with recognizing the problem. Costa Rica is one of 11 countries in the region that has criminalized femicide, differentiating the crime from homicides in general and acknowledging that gender inequality is a primary factor in such murders.

Costa Rica is also trying to battle other inequalities women face, like representation in government. (Its president is a woman, Laura Chinchilla, 54, whose term is soon up.) The country has passed a law that promotes political inclusion of women. At present, the legislature is 39 percent female (pushed along by legal quotas), making it one of the most egalitarian governments in the world.

“Not all women politicians will necessarily be progressive on women’s issues, but there is a better chance that those issues will be considered,” Mata said.

Other laws in the country are intended to punish the perpetrators of domestic violence by imposing restrictions on men who commit violence against their partners, both through criminal and civil courts. For example, a man who has abused his wife may not be allowed to keep a gun in the home or will be ordered to temporarily relocate while providing financial support for his family.

Costa Rica has also set up programs to provide shelter and support for women who are survivors of domestic or gender-based violence. Many of the programs fall under the purview of the National Institute of Women, which was established in 1998 to address the needs and concerns of women, especially those at risk of violence.

The institute “represents a landmark in the commitment by Costa Rican State and society towards gender equality and equity and the promotion and protection of women’s human rights,” a UN report said.

With these measures, programs and institutions in place, Costa Rica has made progress in unraveling the systemic discrimination of women that leads to abuse and exclusion in society.

Yet challenges persist.

“The challenge for Costa Rica, as for the other countries in the region, is to provide comprehensive, multisectoral and sustainable solutions to violence against women and girls,” Pizani of UN Women said.

Ingrained attitudes of inequality remain, engendered by the culture of machismo, and government agencies and nongovernmental organizations continue to explore ways to reach out and educate males about the personal and social repercussions of their behavior and actions toward women.

“Under models of rigid and stereotyped masculinity, certain behaviors of women are viewed as a threat to the authority of men, who consider legitimate the use of force to maintain control of the situation and of their partners,” Pizani said.

Amanda Klasing, a researcher for the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch, emphasized the necessity of educating children early on through school programs about gender-based violence.

“It is fundamental to educate young citizens that violence against women should not be tolerated,” she said.

Addressing this issue may be a slow process, but the negative impacts of violence against women on society are becoming clearer. Saul Weisleder, the deputy permanent represent of Costa Rica to the UN, said that Latin American society was gradually becoming more conscious about the inherent violence of machismo culture against women, and that new laws were being adopted to prevent such incidences, although the level of awakening varies from country to country as the region continues its “renaissance” toward more democratic societies.

“Violence against women has enormous social, economic and productivity costs for individuals, families, communities and societies,” Pizani said. “The elimination and prevention of violence against women and girls can promote economic development and peace and security.”

The American government has acknowledged the contributing effects of violence against women on crime and insecurity in the region by donating $1.6 million to Costa Rican state programs to “combat domestic violence” and “reduce the demand for drugs and increase police engagement with communities in Costa Rica.”

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A United Nations tower in the buffer zone, near a playground situated at the edge of the Arabahmet, or Armenian quarter, on the Turkish Cypriot side of Cyprus. MARIA LUISA GAMBALE

The United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus marked its 50th anniversary in March. The mission, which supervises cease-fire lines and maintains a buffer zone, has involved 32 countries that have contributed troops and police, among whom 184 peacekeepers have died. About 850 troops and 60 police officers make up the mission now, operating currently on an annual budget of $56 million.

Although the violence and bloodshed between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities in Cyprus has died down since 1974 — when there was a coup by Greeks on the island and an intervention by the Turkish military that resulted in Turkish control of the northern side — negotiations have been virtually stuck in time.

Until recently. Reunification talks restarted on Feb. 11 after an 18-month lull, and leaders of the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot communities issued a joint statement emphasizing their desire for a united Cyprus. It is hard to imagine either side agreeing to a proposal any time soon. On Feb. 27 for the first time in more than four decades, chief negotiators from both Cypriot communities held talks in Athens and Ankara, but views on the nature of a possible compromise remain far apart.

At the Ledra Palace crossing in the buffer zone, a UN sign. MARIA LUISA GAMBALE

In December and January, I explored Cyprus for the first time. I live in Istanbul and peace talks in Cyprus started trending in the Turkish news, so I was curious what life felt like on this divided island. I wandered around both sides for a week, talking to people, hearing their personal histories and checking if popular sentiment matched the sudden optimism expressed by Turkish government ministers about the prospects for compromise on North Cyprus’s status.

I stayed on the northern side, the self-declared state called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Turkish-occupied territory of the Republic of Cyprus by the rest of the world. On my second day, I traveled to Nicosia, the capital city of the island. It remains the capital for both sides as the Green Line that divides the island runs right through the city, with a Turkish Cypriot community in the north and a Greek Cypriot community in the south, a buffer zone of varying depth separating them.

On this island split in two, the symbolism improbably deepens when the buffer zone coincides with an ancient moat and becomes an actual gash. On the edges of this zone, life has been evacuated for decades, with most houses surrounding the zone abandoned and business nonexistent. The UN built guard towers in the zone as conflicts continued, but gradually the fighting dissipated, and in 2003 the borders started to open, one crossing point at a time.

The Ledra Palace crossing is particularly evocative. The first time I went through, the two-minute walk between the Turk Cypriot checkpoint and the Greek Cypriot checkpoint took me past bombed-out buildings, UN barracks and desolate parks. Someone threw a rock at me from a walled area above; when I looked up, I saw a kid at some distance from his parents ready to huck another, but I couldn’t tell what that area was: Greek, Turkish or the buffer zone.

The Arabahmet quarter in the Turkish Cypriot side. MARIA LUISA GAMBALE

It didn’t speak of danger, yet it was a complete mystery what function the border area had at this section. The graffiti on a UN sign warning against photography in the area indicated that at least some paint-wielding locals felt that the UN troops stationed there had basically been posted to a vacation site.

Later in my weeklong visit, I slept in a home on the southern side of Nicosia, the area controlled by the Republic of Cyprus. The owner is an engineer from Limassol, farther south in Cyprus, and she started renovating her home seven years ago. Her house is in the heart of the old city, a block from the buffer zone, an area only recently repopulated as the border openings and a cooling down in hostilities made it possible to live within firing distance of the other side.

Ledra Palace crossing on the Turkish side. MARIA LUISA GAMBALE

The old city is a perfect circle of Venetian walls punctuated by 11 bastions, each stretch in various stages of disrepair, with some sections beautifully renovated. From her house, you can walk two blocks over cobblestone alleyways to an eastward-facing bastion with an upscale restaurant recently built into a nearby wall.

In the morning, church bells compete with the muezzins at the one remaining mosque in the Greek Cypriot quarter and the mosques across the Green Line, just blocks away.

On that day, I went back to the Turkish Cypriot side to check out the Arabahmet quarter, the old Armenian neighborhood. The owner of a bookshop on the Greek Cypriot side had described this area to me a few days before, speaking with earned bitterness about the fate of the Armenian people — fleeing to Cyprus from persecution in Turkey only to be uprooted again by the Turks in 1974. The neighborhood is still one of the prettiest parts of the whole city, with whitewashed buildings and colorful shutters lining dusty streets.

On the edge of the neighborhood, I walked into a deserted park with some of the saddest playground equipment I’ve ever seen. A young Turkish solider manned a post near the entrance, looking confused with his gun. The far side of the park is actually the top of one of the city wall’s bastions, and below lies a semideserted football field in the moat area as well as a UN tower with cracked windows.

A bombed-out house in Ledra Palace crossing. MARIA LUISA GAMBALE

A church bell rang from across the divide. I realized as I looked below that I was standing where the kid throwing rocks had been standing. And I thought about what might be going idly through that kid’s mind, acting out a mild frustration that a checkpoint nearby separates him and that football field and the rest of the city he calls home.

I asked everyone I met, “Do you think that the latest talks will be any different than the many attempts over the past couple of decades?”

The answer was invariably no. But the response varied in tone, some vehemently opposed to compromise, some justly pessimistic after many failed attempts and some lightly wry about “official” solutions.

The latter mood came from people who are working hard on unofficial solutions — those who have been working for years to build a civic foundation for peaceful co-existence in the absence of any government’s ability to provide it. For example, the House for Cooperation takes advantage of the neutral zone to create a space where everyone can feel comfortable and neither side is privileged. They provide a place for people to read the history of this island, which is both shared and not shared. Places and people like these gave me the most hope.

Ledra Palace crossing, Turkish side. MARIA LUISA GAMBALE

Use of synthetic drugs is becoming more prevalent and lethal, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says in a new report. Here, bath salts, a type of “designer” drug.

Confirming recent findings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States and other agencies around the world, the United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime said in its annual report that new synthetic drugs, sometime compounded or combined with other substances, are becoming a dangerous, often lethal, menace globally.

The 2014 Global Synthetic Drugs Assessment, published in May by the UN office, said that what it termed “new psychoactive substances” have joined other amphetamine-type stimulants such as the “recreational” drugs ecstasy and methamphetamine. These known drugs, the UN said, are already “more widely used than cocaine, opium or heroin.”

“There is a dynamic and unprecedented global expansion of the synthetic drugs market both in scope and variety,” Jean-Luc Lemahieu, director for policy analysis and public affairs at the UN drug and crime agency, said in a statement when the report was released. “New substances are quickly created and marketed, challenging law enforcement efforts to keep up with the traffickers and curb public health risks.”

In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a federal research organization, encountered one of the new substances in the summer of 2013 in Rhode Island, after 12 people died of what appeared to be drug overdoses. After much tracking of victims and laboratory research, the American experts identified the lethal drug as acetyl fentanyl, a synthetic opioid (defined as a fentanyl analog) that had not been documented in illicit drug use or overdose deaths and is not available as a prescription drug, making it something of a mystery. The disease control center, which also tracks overdoses from legal prescription and over-the-counter medications, said that in 2010, 60 percent of drug overdoses deaths were related to legal pharmaceuticals.

The World Health Organization describes legal opioids as “analgesics, such as codeine and morphine, and antiepileptics, such as lorazepam and phenobarbital” — controlled drugs considered to be essential medicines for treating severe pain and conditions that do not respond to other drugs. Such ingredients or compounds may also figure in drugs to treat insomnia.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, based in Vienna, reported that even for the known drug methamphetamine, trafficking is rising around the world, with reports from Central Asia, India and North America prominent. “Methamphetamine, which can seriously harm users, continues to spread in Asia, posing a growing challenge to health care providers and drug control authorities dealing with large youthful populations.”

Synthetic drugs are considered appealing to young people looking for new “highs” without understanding the potentially fatal medical risks. Asia is now the largest markets for amphetamine stimulants, the UN office said in its report. Since 2009, the report added, about 86 percent of these stimulants, now often trafficked through West Africa, were seized at Western European and Japanese airports on their way to buyers in Japan and Malaysia. New synthetic drugs only add to the burden of identifying dangers and criminal traffickers.

“Marketed — often wrongly — as ‘legal highs’ and ‘designer drugs,’ NPS [new psychoactive substances] are proliferating, but in the absence of an international framework, responses to the problem vary significantly from country to country,” the UN report said. “None of the 348 NPS reported globally in over 90 countries at the end of 2013 is currently under international control.”

The UN drug control agency noted in the report that chemicals or other substances hard to identify are being mixed into known amphetamines — as the US case in Rhode Island ultimately proved. “Evidence from almost all regions of the world indicates that tablets sold as ecstasy or methamphetamine contain substances other than the touted active ingredients,” the report said, adding that “increasingly, they comprise chemical cocktails that pose unforeseen public health challenges. Emergency services may therefore find themselves unable to identify life-threatening substances and powerless to administer the proper medical treatment.”

Among the substances that have appeared in new compounds are veterinary ingredients and khat (or qat), a drug derived from a plant leaf that has been widely used in East Asia and parts of the Arabian peninsula. Khat, the report found, “is being trafficked from East African countries, such as Ethiopia and Kenya, to European destinations, such as the UK and the Netherlands, and even as far afield as North America. Saudi Arabia has reported by far the largest khat seizures in the Middle East. Lately, khat has also been seized in East and South-East Asia, as cultivation of the plant has extended to that region.”

Putting a new focus on maternal health and obstetric fistula in particular, which devastates the lives of women and girls in many poor countries, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), has given its 2014 UN Population Award to an Italian doctor working in Mozambique and to an American maternal and child health organization with programs in scores of countries worldwide.

Aldo Marchesini, an Italian doctor and a Roman Catholic priest, performing fistula surgery in Mozambique. UNFPA

Aldo Marchesini, the doctor and a Roman Catholic priest, as well as Jhpiego (formerly the John Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics) have both been a presence in Africa since the mid-1970s. Marchesini, who first encountered fistula in Uganda in 1974, eventually settled in Mozambique, staying through a brutal and destructive civil war to treat women even as he became the target of combatants.

Jhpiego, the program that began at Johns Hopkins medical center in 1974, was created to reduce maternal deaths generally and to promote family planning as a way of ensuring safer pregnancies through spaced births, prenatal attention and improved facilities with qualified health workers for women giving birth at home or in a clinic. The program, which started its work in Kenya, prides itself on devising and using low-cost innovations that can be widely implemented.

Both Marchesini and Jhpeigo train local doctors and other medical staff in various specialties of maternal health. The reduction in maternal mortality is failing by a wide margin to meet its 2015 Millennium Development Goal. In Mozambique, UNFPA supports Marchesini’s work.

Obstetric fistula, a result of prolonged or obstructed labor when there is no professional expertise available to induce a safe birth, tears or punctures a woman’s birth canal, which leads to lifelong incontinence and social ostracism. Among the most tragic cases are those of girls often too young for a normal, relatively easy childbirth — whose lives are ruined to one extent or another by fistula. Pregnancy-related deaths, including from botched abortions, are the leading cause of death and disability among teenage girls in much of the developing world, where maternal and child health care and information are inadequate or nonexistent.

Surgical procedures to repair fistula are often out of reach for most women and girls who suffer from this debilitating injury or they may not even be aware of the treatment. Marchesini, who told the UN Population Fund that he has probably performed 1,000 such operations, also said he often traveled miles to patients who could not come to him.

The emphasis on obstetric fistula in the award to Marchesini is part of a burgeoning if still small trend in medicine toward tackling other kinds of bodily damage done to girls and women, partly because the data on global maternal mortality are so worrying. A few experiments are in the works to try to find a way to reverse the genital destruction in at least some girls and young women who have undergone female genital mutilation, and projects for improving the work of midwives worldwide are numerous.

A Dutch-led team of experts searching for body parts at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, in eastern Ukraine, on Aug. 5, 2014. The search has been suspended because of the volatile security situation. OSCE 

An international mission of forensic experts and unarmed police led by the Netherlands, with Australian and Malaysian participation, has temporarily suspended its investigation and recovery work at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine. The mission, which lasted just five days until it stopped on Aug. 6 because of the volatile security situation in the region, recovered mostly personal belongings as bodies apparently remain.

The Dutch are leading the investigation into the cause of the crash, which occurred July 17 and killed all 298 people on board — primarily citizens from the Netherlands, Malaysia and Australia. The Australian mission to the United Nations said that as “search and security conditions improve,” the country would return its team to the area “to ensure all identifiable remains have been recovered.”

In addition, a small American military team of logistics and air planning personnel has arrived in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, to help investigate the downing of the flight. The team, however, will not visit the crash site but stay in Kiev.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, a specialized agency of the UN, is also involved in the investigation and response to the crash. The tragedy, for which the United States and other nations have blamed pro-Russian separatists, has prompted airlines to change their routes and reassess the risks of flying over conflict zones. Many commercial carriers were flying over Ukraine as well as Iraq on routes from Europe to the Middle East and Asia, but heightened security after MH17 and new fighting by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Iraq have prompted a change in flight paths. These and other relevant issues will be discussed among airlines and national safety boards in the weeks ahead.

The UN agency has established a task force on airline safety in response to the crash, and on Aug. 14 to 15, it will meet for the first time at its base in Montreal to discuss risks to civil aviation in conflict zones. It is expected to present recommendations on how information can be shared among member states, but since the UN agency can act only with the agreement of all member countries, it will undoubtedly face challenges with Russia and Ukraine seated at the same table, given that the conflict in Ukraine pits the government against pro-Russian separatists.

While the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has been playing a large role in Ukraine from the beginning of the conflict, the International Civil Aviation Organization entered the scene just weeks ago, when the airplane crashed. In late July, it held a meeting in Montreal with the head of the International Air Transport Association, a trade association for airlines, and air traffic controller representatives to address how countries can make case-by-case decisions on flights and whether the practice of nations assessing the safety of their own airspaces should continue.

The UN agency, for example, had raised concerns before the crash about more than one air traffic services provider operating in the Simferopol Flight Information Region, which covers the Crimean peninsula, but Flight MH17 was flying outside that area.

The agency rules say that the nation where a crash occurs, in this case Ukraine, is responsible for leading any follow-up investigation. But with the case of the Malaysian crash, strong opposition from Russia prompted the Netherlands, a more neutral nation that suffered the most deaths from the crash, to take control.

Officials from the UN agency have been assisting Dutch and other authorities at the crash site. Early on, the agency said that once the so-called black boxes were handed over by the separatists, “the cockpit voice recorder is in good condition . . . the digital flight data recorder is still under review.”

The agency cannot restrict airspace and does not issue advisories regarding armed conflict and the threat to civilian airliners. In a statement, it said that it was consulting with the International Air Transport Association “on the respective roles of states, airlines and international organizations for assessing the risk of airspace affected by armed conflict.” Any changes to the agency’s role risks tampering with the sovereignty of airspace and a nation’s ability to control its skies. Airlines are likely to maintain full responsibility for determining flight paths and the risks involved, yet the UN can help to keep airspace regulators informed of trouble spots.

“Nonbinding advisories may be possible,” a source close to the UN agency was quoted by Reuters, using the acronym for the organization. “Airlines want ICAO’s involvement as ICAO may have better access to government sources of security intelligence, and thus could help make better information available to airlines.”

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) until recently had about a dozen monitors at the crash site, which is in the Donetsk region, and was the first international organization to retrieve information from the area after MH17 was downed, sending three forensic experts who stayed 24 hours to arrange for the transfer of bodies. More officials were sent to work with the Dutch-led mission in August, but the OSCE has temporarily suspended its effort as well, citing security conditions.

The organization reported that on Aug. 7 its team, with the Dutch, Malaysian and Australian contingent of 64 experts and unarmed police, went to the village of Rozsypne, close to the crash site, to encourage people to hand over any personal belongings from the crash they might have been holding. No human remains were found in the area by the experts, the organization said from its headquarters in Vienna.

Even as the UN aviation agency, like most others in the world body, must maintain a neutral stance, the conflict in eastern Ukraine and the downing of MH17 has been extremely political in nature. After Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, suggested that the attack against the plane may amount to a war crime, tensions continue to be high regarding the matter at the UN Security Council, where Russia, which backs the separatist movement, is a permanent member. (The Security Council did, however, pass a resolution that authorized an independent investigation into the crash, among other mandates.)

For now, the UN aviation agency will operate as an intermediary, similar to the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and a possible expansion or reshaping of the agency’s abilities was not sought by many of the participants at the July meeting in Montreal.

Beyond the horrific executions, the deadly assaults on Christian and Yazidi communities and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing towns to avoid their terror, fighters of the Islamic State movement sweeping through Syria and Iraq are deliberately demolishing or damaging ancient historical sites in some of the world’s oldest towns and cities.

The Syrian government’s Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums has been assessing damage to various sites in the country during the war, including the ancient city of Bosra, a World Heritage Site. A recent image of the Omari Mosque, above, in Bosra, which in the Roman era had been a provincial capital.

The recent campaign of destruction, combined with damages inflicted on other places in three years of civil war among assorted rebels and the government of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, have left five of the six Unesco World Heritage Sites in Syria in ruins or severely damaged, the American Association for the Advancement of Science reported recently, backing up its findings with high-resolution satellite images.

Syrian government shelling and airstrikes on Homs and Aleppo appear to have decimated or irrevocably damaged large areas of these cities, and the 11th- century crusaders’ castle, Crac des Chevaliers, has been severely damaged. Only the Ancient City of Damascus, part of the Syrian capital region, appears to have mostly survived.

In Iraq, Islamists have attacked numerous monuments in the old city of Mosul, which they seized in June. Many of these sites were outstanding examples of Islamic architecture, experts say. The destroyed historical buildings include the one revered as the tomb of Nebi Yunus — the Biblical prophet Jonah — sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews.

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sept. 22, as the 69th United Nations General Assembly session was getting underway in New York, United States Secretary of State John Kerry joined Unesco’s director general, Irina Bukova, and archeological experts in condemning the loss of the damaged historical sites, reminiscent of the destruction of the giant Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan in 2001.

“We gather in the midst of one of the most tragic and one of the most outrageous assaults on our shared heritage that perhaps any of us have seen in a lifetime,” Kerry said. “Ancient treasures in Iraq and in Syria have now become the casualties of continuing warfare and looting. And no one group has done more to put our shared cultural heritage in the gun sights than ISIL [or ISIS].

“ISIL is not only beheading individuals; it is tearing at the fabric of whole civilizations,” he said. He announced that the State Department, working with the American Schools of Oriental Research, would be documenting the cultural heritage sites.

Bukova, speaking at Unesco in Paris on Sept. 29 on the urgent need to protect Iraq’s endangered historical heritage, said, “We can testify that the destruction of heritage is clearly a forerunner to sectarian persecution.”

Recalling the attacks on the Al-Aksari mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra in 2006-2007 and the displacement of Shia, Sunni and Christians across the country, she added: “The communities concerned understand immediately and clearly that these attacks against culture are attacks against people, against their identities, against their values and history, against their future — this is why the cultural and humanitarian dimensions of international responses cannot be delinked.”

Narmada, above, was able to avoid child marriage through the support of the Mamidipudi Venkatarangaiya Foundation, a nonprofit group in India that works to abolish child labor and ensure education for all children. It is a member of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage. TOM SHORE/THE ELDERS

During the six years that Gulnara Shahinian served as the first United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, she said on numerous occasions, as well as in a 2012 report to the General Assembly, that girls forced to marry against their will end up being condemned to a life of servility and abuse.

“As with all forms of slavery, in order to tackle this problem head on, servile marriages should be criminalized,” Shahinian, an Armenian lawyer and expert on trafficking, said in a statement on the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery in December 2012. “Nothing can justify these forms of slavery; not traditional, religious, cultural economic or even security considerations.”

Apart from child brides, victims of forced marriage include adult women in nonconsensual unions, wives sold or given away as payment of debts and women who are “inherited” by another member of a dead husband’s family. All are vulnerable to domestic violence, sexual abuse, life-threatening living conditions and infections such as HIV-AIDS. Many are forced into the basest forms of servitude and a brutal daily existence in homes they did not choose.

In recent years, the issue of child marriage has received growing attention in campaigns by many organizations, including Girls Not Brides and Anti-Slavery International. This year, coincident with the end of Shahinian’s term as special rapporteur, AIDS-Free World, an international advocacy organization that has moved significantly into women’s rights as AIDS has become a women’s disease in many places, challenged the International Labor Organization, the oldest specialized agency of the UN, to explain why it refuses to recognize that child marriage is demonstrably child labor and forced labor.

The International Labor Organization, in a 2012 report titled “Hard to See, Harder to Count: Survey Guidelines to Estimate Forced Labor of Adults and Children,” specifically ruled out child marriage as trafficking. But the convoluted reasoning raised only more questions.

The report said: “Human trafficking can also be regarded as forced labor, and these guidelines can be used to measure the full spectrum of human trafficking abuses or what some people call ‘modern-day slavery.’ The only exceptions to this are cases of trafficking for organ removal, forced marriage or adoption, unless the latter practices result in forced labor.” [Italics added.]

Guy Ryder, a Briton who is the director-general of the UN’s International Labor Organization.

Yet 85 years ago, the organization, known as ILO, had affirmed: The ILO Forced Labor Convention, 1930 (No. 29) defines forced or compulsory labor as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.” [ILO italics.]

These definitions continue to fall into the framework of employer-employee relations, not relationships within the home or family. When AIDS-Free World demanded an explanation, it found the response from the agency “confusing and shocking: the adult labor performed by child wives does not qualify for ILO protection because it takes place within the girls’ own home,” the advocacy group said.

“By refusing to categorize child marriage as child labor,” the group added, “the ILO diminishes the intense impact of child marriages on girls — it is one horrific violation that triggers many others.”

Perhaps the UN agency needs some updating based on emerging data — and changes in social attitudes, though a handful of reticent countries citing tradition can always stall progress in the UN. In the next decade, 14.2 million girls under 18 will be married each year — more than 140 million over the 10-year period, according to advocacy organizations, using figures from the United Nations Population Fund.

Complications from too-early pregnancies and childbirth are the leading causes of death for girls aged 15 to 19, and girls under 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women between the ages of 20 to 24. Girls as young as 5 or 6 may also be victims of forced sex committed by much older men.

South Asia, with India far in the lead globally, has the largest number and highest rate of child marriages as a region; India is followed, in order, by West and Central Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern and Southern Africa. East Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa and former Soviet-bloc countries fare the best, with Latin America and the Caribbean in between.

UN agency staff members in the field have seen many cases of forced domestic servitude and abuse of child brides. Nongovernmental groups have also heard terrible stories from girls who have been rescued.

“From the moment a girl is forced into marriage, her life is irreparably altered,” AIDS-Free World said in its account of its interaction with the International Labor Organization. “That one decision, made by other people without her consent, permanently removes all of her fundamental rights as a child — to education, health, rest, leisure, play and recreation, protection from violence, and protection from performing any work that is likely to harm her physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. . . . They will be exploited by their societies; they should not be abandoned by the United Nations.”

Hervé Ladsous, the chief of the United Nations Peacekeeping Department, in his office in New York. There is a need now, he said, for peacekeepers to do more proactive protection of civilians, like conducting patrols off bases and using armed intervention brigades.

By the time United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named a panel in October to review peacekeeping comprehensively for the first time in more than 14 years, innovations in technology and intelligence-gathering to make UN missions more effective had already been introduced by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The strategic and tactical changes, some still in experimental stages, are significantly changing how missions work — or will work — in the field.

Hervé Ladsous, who as a UN under secretary-general took over the peacekeeping department in October 2011, has made overdue updates in peacekeeping doctrine and methods his goal, he said in an interview in his office at UN headquarters in November.

“Peacekeeping, the protection of civilians — initially you thought, O.K., by your sheer presence you deter attacks, but that is not the expectation anymore,” he said. There is a need now for proactive protection, he added — more patrolling off bases and the use of armed intervention brigades, the first of which is operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, charged with pursuing and engaging rebel armies.

Ladsous has begun to deploy drones (unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs) and is pressing regional nations to gather human intelligence better and more consistently. He seeks to expand signal intelligence, using high-tech surveillance of communications such as telephone eavesdropping, and greater dispersal of simple cellphones to connect vulnerable people to UN forces on the ground in time of danger. (An early experiment with this technique went notoriously wrong when one group of UN peacekeepers in Congo ignored calls for help from villagers.)

Ladsous said that when he took over as peacekeeping chief, “intelligence was still a very dirty word” around the UN. It has now become central to the creation of “fusion cells,” designed to collect as much information from as many sources as possible to devise effective, realistic strategies tailored to a mission. The first unit is being set up in Mali, where vicious ambushes by Islamists have cost the lives of 32 peacekeepers since the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (Minusma) was established in July 2013.

Fusion cells are a concept “still very much in the making,” Ladsous said. “We are experimenting. We have created that one in Mali; we have yet to optimize it. It’s not fully operational to the degree I would like. But certainly we have contributions. The Dutch, in particular, have already some technical drones, surveillance drones. They have the helicopters, attack helicopters. They have patrols on the ground, so that’s one source.”

The French military, through Operation Barkhane and before that Serval, have provided assistance. Ladsous said that he was hoping to acquire more drones, which many countries have, and expand their use to Congo and the Central African Republic.

Still a work in progress, however, is improving the crucial role of human intelligence-gathering among local populations. “We are asking the Malians themselves, because they know quite a few things but they’re not effective about it,” Ladsous said. “So it’s a matter of tweaking the system till it really provides the right information to the right people at the right time.”

In Mali, among the unresolved questions, he said, is how “to get information about what is going to happen in terms of an asymmetric attack.” His requests are often met with noncooperation. “I warned the armed group representatives around Algiers a couple of weeks ago. I said, You claim that you control this part or that part of north Mali; you’re bound to know something, so otherwise why are you present at these talks? I said, I expect much more cooperation from you.”

A panel of technology experts, separate from the new high-level group named by the secretary-general, was set up to advise the department and is due to report back to Ladsous by the end of this year. In February, a conference of army chiefs of staff from around the world will meet at the UN, following an initiative proposed by United States Vice President Joseph Biden, who chaired a summit on peacekeeping at the UN in September. The idea is to draw on their regional perspectives and ideas.

Not all troop-contributing countries — or UN members — are enthusiastic about the rapid changes being made by Ladsous, an experienced French diplomat born in 1950 who has served as ambassador to China and Indonesia and deputy chief of the French mission at the UN, among numerous other posts. He was most recently chief of staff of the French Minister of European and Foreign Affairs.

There were objections to the introduction of the armed intervention brigade in Congo, which has pursued some of the most disruptive armed militias and gangs in the eastern part of the country with some success, particularly against the Congolese rebel group known as M23. The formation of a battle-ready brigade “has raised some new issues, of course,” he said. “For instance, the old-time contingents, some of them are not terribly comfortable with that, so we have to explain, discuss, convince. But the results are there. Certainly the brigade has proved to be a very useful tool.”

More fundamentally, some troop-contributing countries and their battalion commanders on the ground are loathe to stray from traditional concepts of peacekeeping, he said.

“The three rules: consent of the host state, neutrality and impartiality. That’s fine, but what do you do when the main actors are nonstate actors? What do you do when these people are behaving atrociously? Can you be neutral, impartial, vis-à-vis people who have killed, raped, enrolled children, been responsible for huge numbers of displaced and refugees? It’s not a reality anymore, so we have to try and address that.”

Bangladeshi peacekeepers guarding the headquarters, located behind the tank, of the UN mission in Bamako, the capital of Mali. JOE PENNEY

Instilling a sense of responsibility among peacekeepers to the UN and to the people of countries where they serve has long been a problem mostly because national contingents report back directly to their countries, not to the peacekeeping department, and countries have a mixed record at best in dealing with dereliction of duty, serious misbehavior generally and sexual violence, in particular. And then there was the case of the Nepali contingent that apparently brought cholera to Haiti, adding an unexpected deathly blow to an earthquake battered country.

“This has to be worked on, continuously,” Ladsous said of building greater responsibility. “That raises the issue of training, which is the responsibility of the troop-contributing country before they deploy. But sometimes it turns out that they are neither sufficiently trained nor — and that is even more complicated — well equipped. We have established our standards, and more often than not many of them are not in compliance. I’m thinking particularly of the African troops we took over from the AU [African Union] in Mali last year and Central Africa this year, and so we asked them to address that issue.”

An innovation recently introduced at headquarters deals with what Ladsous calls “quality control” in operations. “I succeeded in getting what I still call the inspector general — although we are speaking UN-ese, so now it’s the director of strategic partnerships — but that’s what it is basically. They’ve been in function for effectively six months and they are doing very useful work.”

Looking at individual missions in the field, with a total of about 130,000 peacekeepers globally, Ladsous takes the nontraditional view that when force commanders are not meeting the requirements of their assignments, they can be removed at any time. “There has been the necessity in some cases to change the force commander,” he said, adding that he would continue to exercise that right.

Other reforms will be pursued, some of them away from battlefields, Ladsous noted. “We also need to be more environment-friendly — reduce the footprint. I keep making the point, what’s the use of having those big four-by-fours, which are expensive and consume a lot of gasoline, in a city like Abidjan. A normal size sedan would do the job. We’re trying to go to solar energy when we can. Unifil in Lebanon is producing almost 15 percent of its [own] electricity.”

UN police work is critical in restoring order and introducing some normality to societies ripped apart by conflict, Ladsous said. “Sometimes it’s even the heart of the matter.” In the Central African Republic, two opposing ad hoc militias, the anti-balaka and the Seleka, linked respectively to mostly warring Christian and Muslim communities, have created havoc and large numbers of casualties among civilians.

“They are not military units, or even paramilitary,” he said. “They are basically gangs of criminals. And that makes the challenge one for law and order, which is why we are experimenting with a new formula there, where in the capital, in Bangui, the person responsible for security is actually the UN police commissioner. There is, of course, strong backing from a couple of infantry battalions, but it is the police component that is front line.”

“What is important is never to forget that a peacekeeping operation is really a political tool,” Ladsous said. “It’s not about the military per se. It’s a tool to achieve some political goals, with a strategy, with all the add-ons that become necessary because of the nature of mandates: protecting civilians, building or rebuilding a state which has collapsed or partially collapsed — or maybe never existed.”

A view of Castillo San Felipe del Morro, a huge fort with fortifications overlooking San Juan Bay in Puerto Rico, built by Spain from 1539 to 1786 and said to be the best example of Spanish colonial defensive military design. It is part of a larger World Heritage Site. Zug/Flickr

DORADO, Puerto Rico — When Europeans first invaded the Caribbean beginning in the late-15th century — more by chance than by design — devastation soon followed. Local populations were decimated by diseases from another world, and native people’s doomed attempts to repel the fearsome strangers met with only more death. Within two centuries, the slave trade was flourishing as European ships sailed to the west coast of Africa laden with manufactured goods to be bartered or sold for slaves captured by African traders for transporting to the Caribbean as plantation labor. The fruits of slave labor, including cargoes of rum and sugar, sailed back to Europe, completing the deadly triangle.

Yet the Europeans — Spanish, British, French and Dutch — eventually also brought with them the earliest urban settlements in the region, graced with imposing civic and residential architecture, which endured and became hallmarks of Caribbean island nations. To guard the new towns and military installations, spectacular fortifications were constructed.

It may seem paradoxical, but small Caribbean island states, most of which gained independence (or at least substantial autonomy) in the 20th century, have adopted this landscape as their own and been strong protectors of these historical sites. Given the small scale and populations of the island nations, the region has an impressive number of World Heritage Sites: 19 of 131 of them scattered across Latin America, according to Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The list includes both cultural and natural sites “of outstanding universal value.”

The Caribbean island nations are not alone in their stewardship of the colonial past. In Asia, Singapore, Malaysia and Sri Lanka have been preserving or restoring colonial-era hotels, even while promoting the construction of new ones. Vietnam brought back French experts to work on once-grand buildings that had deteriorated. The derelict landmarks of Yangon, the old Burmese capital known as Rangoon, are looking for saviors. India’s impressive hilltop government center, the wide Raj Path that leads to it and the residential neighborhoods around it are all British creations that have become symbols of Indian power.

The Caribbean heritage sites have proved to be important to tourism, a major revenue earner in the economically fragile island region, drawing cruise ships on port calls and land-based travelers who spend more time and money. In this context, the opening of more travel to Cuba from the United States after an agreement to upgrade relations between the two countries is bound to bring new attention and income to the Cuban sites. There are nine of them, the largest number in any Caribbean nation.

Cuba’s best-known urban attraction is Old Havana and its fortifications. Constructed by the Spanish beginning in 1519, Old Havana, the historical heart of the modern city, is distinguished by its classical urban plazas and buildings of outstanding merit. “Its overall sense of architectural, historical and environmental continuity makes it the most impressive historical city center in the Caribbean and one of the most notable in the [Americas] as a whole,” a Unesco citation says.

A streetscape in Old Havana, Cuba, another Unesco World Heritage Site. JIALIANG GAO

Like Cuba, Puerto Rico was claimed and developed by Spain, which ceded both islands to the US after the Spanish-American War in 1898. (Cuba was given its independence four years later; Puerto Rico remains an autonomous US commonwealth territory, with Puerto Ricans holding American citizenship.) Unesco recognizes the entire area of San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, as an historic zone.

The island was pivotal to the security of the Spanish colonies and, with Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, had the first municipal governments in the hemisphere. It was, and still is, awash in fortifications. The El Morro fortress, on a rocky headland overlooking San Juan Bay, is widely considered to be the best example of Spanish colonial defensive military design.

Puerto Rico is also awash in strip malls with US mainland fast-food franchises, but that’s another story. Old San Juan, however, has retained and protected its historic character, with narrow cobblestone streets and imposing public and residential buildings, many now painted in bright Caribbean colors.

While many of the World Heritage Sites around the Caribbean are linked to Spanish colonial history, there are also British and Dutch historical monuments and exceptional natural areas under protection. In Barbados, a former British colony, the capital, Bridgetown, and its garrison are on the World Heritage list. Belize has its Barrier Reef Reserve System. The picturesque Dutch-style inner city of Willemstad and its harbor in Curaçao, still a Dutch possession, are among the protected historic sites.

The countries that have grown from their colonial beginnings in the Caribbean have changed in many ways over the years. Immigration has brought people from East Asia and troubled parts of Europe. Afro-Caribbean people, most descended from slaves, form major parts of island populations and are integrated into many families. “Here, we are all mix and match,” a Puerto Rican designer said.

Enrique Vivoni-Farage, associate professor of architecture at the University of Puerto Rico and director of its architectural archives, has written extensively about attempts early in the 20th century to “Americanize” Puerto Rico, without great success. For example, there was the misguided effort to introduce the Mission-style architecture of the American Southwest and California on the assumption that since it was also Spanish in cultural origin it would work in Puerto Rico. It didn’t. In the end, what emerged from various ideas tried out in Puerto Rico was “Puerto Ricanness,” Vivoni-Farage wrote.

There are some gaps to be filled in the Caribbean. Memorializing the dark days of slavery could be strengthened, an international review of Caribbean sites found in 2013. Regional nations have been discussing action plans for the decade ahead, linking capacity building for preservation’s sake with the future of sustainable development. At the same time, Unesco is leading a campaign to bring the opinions of more local people into the designation and protection of World Heritage Sites. The ideas they have about what history should be preserved and protected could be surprising, and perhaps more reflective of contemporary thinking about the colonial past.

A $40 million deal struck last year in which Cambodia agreed with Australia to accept refugees who are being detained in the small Pacific island nation of Nauru has incensed the United Nations refugee agency. Here, demonstrators in Australia in March 2015 protesting the country’s migration policies.

PHNOM PENH — A controversial $40 million deal signed between the Australian and Cambodian governments last September to resettle about 1,000 refugees from detention centers on the South Pacific island nation of Nauru to Cambodia was the first time two ratifying states of the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees agreed to transfer their resettlement responsibilities.

The aid money from Australia to Cambodia is said to be paying for the costs of resettling the refugees. Nauru agreed originally more than a decade ago to take in refugees who had been trying to get to Australia. For Nauru, offshore processing has become a vital money earner for the economy but conditions for housing the refugees have been inhospitable.

Five of the refugees were reportedly to arrive voluntarily in Cambodia this week .But at the last minute, the plane to ferry them to the capital here apparently encountered logistic problems, so Australia canceled the trip. Some news reports, however, suggest that the refugees who were willing to go had refused to sign agreements. The refugees originally fled Myanmar, Iran and Sri Lanka and were given cash as part of their transfer to Cambodia.

News reports are also saying that Cambodia was not ready to receive the refugees, who were told in a letter from the Australian government that Cambodia “is a safe country” and that it “does not have problems with crime or stray dogs.”

The Cambodian Red Cross said that it had not received an order to prepare for the arrival of the refugees from Nauru.

“We simply do not have the structure or the money,” a Red Cross officer said. Under the agreement, if no refugees volunteer to relocate to Cambodia, they will not be forced to resettle.

The refugees being detained in Nauru had apparently received the letters from the Australian government last year, aiming to persuade them of the benefits of relocating to Cambodia, where they will be eligible for citizenship in seven years, the letters also said.

The International Organization for Migration, which is not part of the UN system, said it was willing to help facilitate the transfer of the refugees to Cambodia, based on preconditions, such as the right to live and work anywhere in the country, one of the poorest nations in Asia.

While the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that it had been given a chance to comment on the arrangement with Australia and Cambodia, it had no details on the negotiations. Showing its concern, the agency condemned the deal the day it was signed last September.

Human Rights Watch said in an article in The Guardian recently that Cambodia had “a terrible record for protecting refugees and is mired in serious human rights abuses.”

Vivian Tan, the refugee agency’s regional press officer in Bangkok, told PassBlue that “We believe there is a viable alternative to asylum seekers and refugees seeking protection through dangerous and exploitative voyages.”

As to the news this week of the canceled trip, Tan said that since the UNHCR is not a party to the bilateral arrangement, it does not have details on when, who and how many people will be relocated from Nauru to Cambodia.

A Nauru processing facility for refugees. CREATIVE COMMONS

How Cambodia will actually carry out the resettlement is a big question. Its record of accepting asylum seekers was criticized in 2009, for example, when 20 Uighurs, indigenous Muslims from western China, had sought asylum in Cambodia but were deported back to China by the Cambodian authorities, before a full examination of refugee claims was made. China apparently pressured Cambodia to return the Uighurs.

The action was considered a grave breach of international law, and in a diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks, Raymond Hall, the UN refugee agency’s regional representative at the time, said that “UNHCR face[d] a dilemma. . . . It could try to renew its productive record with Cambodia of the past, or it could step back from much of its mission in Cambodia to the point where ‘no one will be protected.’ ” Hall added that UNHCR’s future collaboration will obviously be “colored by this event.” 

Critics say that the UN refugee agency’s authority has been undermined by the 2014 Cambodia and Australia pact. The memorandum of understanding between the two countries on the deal is contrary to international practice on refugee matters.

“The reality is the UNHCR has been kept out of the picture in this refugee dumping deal all along, and shamefully both governments repeatedly denied providing the draft MOU for comment by UNHCR’s experts,” Phil Robertson, the deputy director for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said in an interview. “This is really a slap in the face of UNHCR, and shows how little Phnom Penh and Canberra actually care for the rights of these refugees who will be sent from Nauru to Cambodia.

“Cambodia picks and chooses which refugees to accept and which to call economic migrants and try to reject,” Robertson added, saying that “Cambodia’s leaders don’t have the notion embedded in their mind that the Refugee Convention means that asylum seekers deserve equal treatment, no matter if they come from a remote country or a nation right next door.”

Cambodia has been considered an “intermediary” country in the refugee context and, generally, asylum seekers and refugees resettle in a third country after they are detained in Cambodia.

The enormous rise in numbers of refugees worldwide — attributed mostly to the Syrian war but also to other upheavals throughout the Middle East and elsewhere — has made it much more difficult for the UN refugee agency to keep its operation going in Cambodia, as its work there has been vastly cut since 2013. Since the refugee population in Cambodia was around 100 people at the end of 2012, resources for the UN agency were reallocated elsewhere.

Yet it continues to provide assistance in Cambodia, helping the government’s own refugee office to enhance its capacities. A Cambodian delegation visited Nauru in January 2015, for example, to ostensibly welcome the refugees eventually to their country.

An ethnic Montagnard fleeing from Vietnam and hiding in the Cambodian bush shows his ID card. CLOTHILDE LE COZ

In the northeastern Cambodian jungle at the border with Vietnam, another refugee problem is playing out. It is estimated that 90 Vietnamese Christians, ethnic Montagnards from the Central Highlands, have entered Cambodia illegally, hoping to seek asylum since October 2014, according to villagers helping them in Cambodia.

So far, more than 40 ethnic Montagnards have been sent back to Vietnam by the Cambodian authorities. Thirteen have been processed to get their refugee status.

While the UN office for human rights in Cambodia said it was concerned about the situation of the Montagnards trying to flee Vietnam, its scope for action appears to be limited.

“We cannot assume the government’s responsibility to care for refugees and asylum seekers,” Tan of the UN refugee agency in Bangkok told PassBlue, referring to the Montagnards’ situation. Given that Cambodia signed the UN Convention on Refugees, it was expected that its government would take on this responsibility, but the Cambodian authorities are denying the UN refugee agency and UN human-rights personnel access to the Montagnards.

Michael Hirsch, a psychology professor at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, who started a project in 2012 to provide refugees and asylum seekers living in Cambodia to gain access to health care, vocational training and other important services, said in an interview that “If an ethnic Montagnard feels that the Vietnamese government is persecuting him, and then he tries to seek protection by the Cambodian government, it could be perceived by the Vietnamese government that the Cambodian government has a problem with the way that Vietnam treats its citizens.”

Cambodia, he added, “doesn’t want to anger Vietnam, so it rejects the asylum claim of the Montagnard.”

This is not a new problem. In 2001, when the Cambodian authorities forced about 89 Montagnards back to Vietnam, it closed the UN centers housing Montagnard asylum-seekers 10 years later.

The new development goals could more emphatically include reducing air pollution now that a UN agency has drawn concerted attention to pollution’s health risks. Smog levels in India, above, are among the highest in the world. JOHN HASLAM/FLICKR

Negotiations are entering the last stages of formulating the Sustainable Development Goals. For over a year, governments, the United Nations system, nongovernment organizations and parliamentarians have been engaged in negotiations on the next set of development goals, called SDGs, to succeed the eight Millennium Development Goals, which expire at the end of this year.

The resulting 17 draft goals add sustainability, accountability and inclusion aspects to the new post-2015 development agenda. Key items, like clean water, have gotten major traction through the negotiating process on the goals as well as new elements on rule of law.

What is crucially missing as a first-order norm is clean air and clearly agreed targets, so far, for reducing ambient air pollution, the easiest-to-measure sustainability parameter.

But recently, the World Health Assembly, the 193-member governing body of the World Health Organization, for the first time in its history approved a resolution on air pollution — what the agency calls the globe’s single-largest environmental health risk. Passage of this landmark resolution should now give stronger traction to the air-quality targets and indicators sputtering now in the development negotiations.

A full review of the revised basic draft on the SDGs was done by Global Parliamentary Services, a legislative consultancy. The review found that through July 2014, air quality was missing from the zero draft of the open working group on negotiations.

Ambient air quality is the easiest measurable target for managing the goal of “sustainable” cities, where more than five billion people — 60 percent of the world population — will be living by 2030. Poor air quality increases respiratory diseases among children and the elderly, days of work lost by parents, particularly mothers, and increased public and private health-care costs. The WHO says that both indoor and ambient air pollution are responsible for eight million deaths annually.

Between July 2014 and November 2014, concerted advocacy by an array of activists led to the words “air quality” being added to an SDG subgoal, 11.6. Agreed-on baseline air-quality indicators for 2015 and air-quality targets for 2030 are still in discussion. Getting the right air-quality indicators should be easy, as the international community has an agreed set of guidelines for air quality, set by WHO, which also publishes a regular survey of air pollution in cities around the world.

This work is led by a cautious but persistent physician, Dr. María Neira, director of the Public Health and Environment Division of the World Health Organization and a former vice minister for health in Spain.

“We started on air quality more than 12 years ago,” Dr. Neira said in an interview with PassBlue. “WHO’s first guidelines were published in 2004 — the guidelines give standards for the most dangerous pollutants.” The WHO database is generated from about 2,000 cities worldwide.

“Since not all cities in the world collect such data,” Dr. Neira said, “we simulate using ground level data, satellite information, mathematical models as contaminated matter travels by air.”

Dr. María Neira, a public health and environment expert for WHO.

Dr. Neira’s division has also been producing studies showing the economic cost of inaction as a relevant tool for government and city officials and policymakers.

Air pollution remains the single-largest environmental health risk globally. Europe’s 2015 State of the Environment report confirms that urban air pollution will become the main environmental cause of premature mortality in 2050, and 75 percent of Europeans live in or around cities, a number that is projected to increase.

Génon K. Jensen, the executive director of the Health and Environment Alliance (Heal), a Brussels-based nonprofit group focused on health and the environment in Europe, underscored that the WHO resolution would save lives, up to 430,000 early deaths in Europe alone. Reducing air pollution in urban areas could have a transformative effect on cutting respiratory diseases.

Tackling air pollution will have enormous economic benefits for health-care systems as well. In April, the World Health Organization released a new economic study highlighting the costs of air pollution for 53 countries in the European region. According to the study, the approximately 600,000 premature deaths and diseases caused by air pollution totaled an economic cost of $1.6 trillion in 2010.

The World Health Assembly’s resolution on air pollution was introduced by Albania, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Monaco, Norway, Panama, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United States, Uruguay and Zambia. Asian countries whose cities are choking from air pollution were not among the sponsors, but the resolution was adopted as is; and the Assembly has now empowered the World Health Organization with a new commitment of resources and support from member states to take action against air pollution.

As a result of the resolution, the organization should be able to move to the forefront of ensuring strong indicators for air pollution in the SDG on health, as well as in other goals. Air quality is a measure of sustainability across several other goals — sustainable cities, sustainable agriculture and clean energy, among others.

Officials managing the negotiating process on the development goals at the UN are anxious, however, to tie down loose ends and finish the job quickly. Amina J. Mohammed, the UN Secretary-General’s special adviser on post-2015 development planning, leads this work.

“Before the Open Working Group, we had started to shape that agenda as we needed to get down from 500 issues and targets,” she said, adding that the group “knocked up against sexual reproductive rights, LGBT rights, where we had to hold the line at Conventions already agreed by member states.”

No more goals can be added now, Mohammed said. “Existing challenges that haven’t been resolved, can be made clearer, such as the means of implementation, financing technical capacities, ODA [official development assistance] targeted timelines. Member states are very clear that these [goals] remain at 17. . . . ”

“It’s not a neat number, package, but the world isn’t either,” added Mohammed, with her characteristic finality.

There was some effort made to tighten parameters on the goals, including air-quality indicators, during the discussions of the UN Statistical Commission, an advisory body. The Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a UN-linked entity focused on scientific and technical work for the SDGs, had put forward air-quality indicators in several goals, including 9 (on infrastructure) and 11 (on cities), but they are now relegated to just the health goal, No. 3.

The mantle now belongs to the World Health Organization to ensure that the UN’s lofty aims in its citizen-survey campaign on developing the sustainable goals, called “The World We Want,” includes a world in which we can all breathe easily.