One ambassador's speech, and 200 miles of ocean for every coast
A 1967 UN speech about seabed minerals began the process behind the 1982 Law of the Sea treaty, which gave coastal states a 200-mile economic zone.
tag archive
#united-nations.
Every story tagged #united-nations.
Cambodia's 1993 election was the UN's biggest peacekeeping bet
In May 1993 the UN staged Cambodia's election under a 22,000-strong force. The royalists won 58 seats to 51, and the coalition that followed broke up in 1997.
The NPT let five countries keep the bomb, on a promise
The 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty recognised five nuclear-weapon states and asked everyone else to go without. The deal rested on a promise to disarm.
A vote on autonomy, and East Timor's road to independence
East Timor's 1999 UN ballot asked about autonomy within Indonesia, yet everyone read it as an independence vote. Violence followed, then a UN mission.
UN votes to retire the Mercator map for Equal Earth
The UN voted 164 to 1 to phase out the Mercator map, which shrinks Africa to the look of Greenland, in favour of the 2018 Equal Earth projection.
The African Union depends on outsiders to pay for peacekeeping
The African Union and its partners run ten peace operations. A UN official said in 2009 that their funding rests on the UN or a small pool of donors.
Every UN member but the US signed the children's rights treaty
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out what every under-18 is owed, from a name to contact with both parents. Scotland made it law in 2024.