The Security Council Intifada | Foreign Policy

How Palestine is making its diplomatic moves using the most powerful UN body:

The flurry of Council diplomacy is part of a broader push by Palestinian diplomats and their supporters to capitalize on international frustration with Israel and to use multilateral institutions as means of pressuring Israel into a policy shift. In recent months, the Palestinian Authority has moved to join a clutch of international organizations and treaties, from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Those moves are starting to pay diplomatic dividends: A meeting of the states that belong to the Geneva Conventions, another treaty Palestine has joined, rebuked Israel’s settlement policies this week. Palestinian officials have also dangled the prospect of joining the International Criminal Court, a step that Israel fears and that Washington has warned against.

This week’s Security Council move is one piece of this broader strategy, but it also marks a new chapter in the Council’s long and tortured relationship with the Middle East.This week’s Security Council move is one piece of this broader strategy, but it also marks a new chapter in the Council’s long and tortured relationship with the Middle East. For almost 70 years, the body charged with maintaining international peace and security has failed utterly to resolve the longstanding conflict. For all the hubbub in New York, there’s little reason to believe this encounter will be any more fruitful.

via The Security Council Intifada | Foreign Policy.

Cutoff of U.S. Money Leads Unesco to Slash Programs – NYTimes.com

Meanwhile, at Unesco, austerity kicks in, potentially impacting key agenda items such a education among the most threatened areas of the globe:

The cutoff last October came as a shock, Ms. Bokova said, because the United States observed it immediately, withholding the $72 million in dues it would normally have paid at the end of the year, money that had already been allocated or spent. The United States’ share was 22 percent of the Unsesco budget, the proportion it pays throughout the United Nations system.

“They say don’t miss a good crisis to make reform, but I think it’s too good of a crisis,” Ms. Bokova said. When Unesco did not receive the American money late last year, it immediately used its working capital fund of $31 million for the budget, froze all programs, canceled any program in the pipeline, ended some programs, froze hiring, initiated a voluntary retirement plan, changed its travel rules, reduced translations, renegotiated contracts and limited the use of outside consultants.

“I can’t think of a single program that was not affected,” Ms. Bokova said.

The suspension of payments also took the Obama administration by surprise. Congress had passed two little-noticed laws in the early 1990s requiring an immediate cutoff of money to any United Nations agency that accepted Palestine as a member. Efforts by the American ambassador, David T. Killion, and the Obama administration to get the money restored have failed, and the issue has been put off until after the presidential election next month. If the financing is not restored, the next Unesco general assembly, in two years, can vote to suspend American membership.

via Cutoff of U.S. Money Leads Unesco to Slash Programs – NYTimes.com.

Turkey’s Efforts to Repatriate Art Alarm Museums – NYTimes.com

Tough talk on cultural patrimony and other related issues from Turkey:

Turkey is not alone in demanding the return of artifacts removed from its borders; Egypt and Greece have made similar demands of museums, and Italy persuaded the Met to return an ancient bowl known as the Euphronios krater in 2006.But Turkey’s aggressive tactics, which come as the country has been asserting itself politically in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring, have particularly alarmed museums. Officials here are refusing to lend treasures, delaying the licensing of archaeological excavations and publicly shaming museums.

“The Turks are engaging in polemics and nasty politics,” said Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees the Pergamon. “They should be careful about making moral claims when their museums are full of looted treasures” acquired, he said, by the Ottomans in their centuries ruling parts of the Middle East and southeast Europe.

via Turkey’s Efforts to Repatriate Art Alarm Museums – NYTimes.com.

United Nations Tunes Up for First International Jazz Day – NYTimes.com

Important global meetings at the General Assembly.  Bring your own saxophone:

“Jazz is a great music that I feel has never been given its just due or recognition for having affected so many lives in various cultures throughout the world,” said Mr. Hancock, who was the driving force behind the designation and is a special ambassador for the organization.

“Unesco is exactly the proper setting to do that. With these musicians from various nations, we’re really showing a vision for globalization that’s a positive one.”Monday night’s concert follows similar shows on Friday night in Paris, once a home to expatriate American players like Dexter Gordon, Sidney Bechet, Bud Powell and Archie Shepp; and at sunrise Monday morning in New Orleans, considered the birthplace of jazz. Scheduled to attend all three events is Irina Bokova, a former Bulgarian minister of foreign affairs, who is now director general of Unesco.

“I think there is a lot of symbolism around jazz and the multiculturalism and diversity of which it speaks,” she said in a telephone interview from Paris. “If you ask what jazz is for me, I’d say it’s freedom, human dignity and boundless spirit, which makes it a very very powerful universal force. We say around here that jazz was born in the United States, but is owned by the world.”

via United Nations Tunes Up for First International Jazz Day – NYTimes.com.