UN/Treaties

The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) on Wednesday called family planning an "essential human right” and urged the world's nations to help meet the needs of 222 million women in developing countries.

In its annual report on the state of the world's population, the fund said spending an extra $4.1 billion a year to make family planning available to everyone would reduce costs for maternal and newborn healthcare by $11.3 billion annually. 

It would also help combat poverty, exclusion, poor health and gender inequality, the report said.

A broad coalition of states agreed Monday to fight cigarette smuggling by requiring manufacturers to be licensed and tobacco products to be trackable.

The agreement came after more than five years of negotiations between parties to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

It will not apply to the United States, however, because U.S. officials have not ratified the larger framework. 

Republicans and pro-gun-rights Democrats worry the treaty would affect the sale of civilian weapons in the United States.

Lawmakers from the group of 56 European and Central Asian nations have been observing U.S. elections since 2002, without incident.

"I plan to stick with him in 2012," said the former secretary of State, who also backed Obama in 2008.

The U.N. elected four U.S. allies — Australia, Luxembourg, South Korea and Rwanda — to stints on the powerful council.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that international collaboration will be vital as melting sea ice opens up new shipping and oil-and-gas drilling opportunities in the Arctic.

“Some of our energy diplomacy is focused on remote areas like the Arctic, a frontier of unexplored oil-and-gas deposits and a potential environmental catastrophe,” Clinton said during a wide-ranging speech on energy diplomacy at Georgetown University.

“The melting ice caps are opening new drilling opportunities as well as new maritime routes, so it is critical that we now act to set rules of the road to avoid conflict over those resources and protect the Arctic’s fragile ecosystem,” she said.

The State Department on Thursday began live-streaming its daily press briefings on the Internet, giving people around the world a chance to see where the U.S. government stands on global issues in real time.

"We are finally in the 21st century here," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland announced Thursday. "Starting today, the State Department will stream the daily press briefing live on www.state.gov, which maybe will encourage some of you to watch it in your offices and I’ll have less people in the room – no."

The press briefings are usually held around noon. Interested viewers can find out the time for the weekday briefings by subscribing to the daily schedule here. Transcripts and a video recording of the briefing, which is available several hours after the briefing ends, here. 

The State Department put the United Nations on notice Thursday that it will press the world body to adopt a “more efficient, entrepreneurial culture” during the annual session that started last week.

“Will we choose true reform, or window dressing? Fiscal restraint or business as usual? Sunshine or secrecy?” Joseph Torsella, the U.S. representative for U.N. Management and Reform, said in the opening session of his committee. “The questions facing us are fundamentally similar: Will we choose the easy, comfortable path of the status quo, or take the difficult, ground-breaking path of progress towards a stronger, more effective and more relevant U.N.?”

Torsella went on to urge the U.N. to adopt a pay freeze and approve the public disclosure of audits of the U.N. Secretariat, a proposal that has already been considered twice by the General Assembly. He also said the United States won't accept any additional assessment to pay for the renovation of the U.N. headquarters in New York City, which was $265 million — or 14 percent — over-budget as of March, but instead argued that “every avenue must be explored to bring the project back within the approved budget.”

Your morning global affairs speed-read

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder are scheduled to announce a new partnership to combat human trafficking at 10:30 a.m. The announcement comes after President Obama issued an executive order last week aimed at eradicating trafficking by federal contractors or subcontractors and told the Clinton Global Initiative that he would soon be issuing new orders.

On Capitol Hill, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission holds a briefing at 10 a.m. on “The Status of Women's Human Rights in Afghanistan.” 

Also at the Capitol, the U.S. Helsinki Commission holds a briefing on child sex trafficking at 2 p.m.

Finally, the U.S. Institute of Peace hosts a webcast on managing the post-Assad transition in Syria at 9:30 a.m.