Pakistan's UN mission recently organised a cultural festival of ideas for the first time in the history of foreign office in New York, and it aimed to promote Pakistan's diverse cultural aspects including arts and literature. [...] A combination of cultural and public diplomacy is not only a powerful tool that can improve public image but can also help bring economic investment and tourism opportunities. 

The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) may well be a signature initiative of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, designed to create for himself a dynamic, if not dubious, humanitarian legacy, but it could hardly have been more heartily welcomed than in Turkey, the country where the 2016 WHS will take place later this month.

A day before he signed the Paris Agreement on climate change at the United Nations headquarters last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stopped by a Brooklyn gym, where he gave boxing lessons to a group of disadvantaged youth. While Trudeau put the youngsters through their paces, for the past six months it’s the prime minister’s passport that has been getting a workout.

[…] With only 50 instructors, small Kenyan charity Ujamaa has trained almost 25,000 Malawian children to fight the sexual abuse that is commonly committed by those they most trust. […] Backed by the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, the Ujamaa network, which started in some of the Kenyan capital Nairobi's toughest slums, now extends to more than 250 schools across seven districts.

In character as Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord, the lead character in the CBS drama "Madam Secretary," Tea Leoni was delivering an urgent address about the need for the United Nations to fight Hizb al-Shahid, a fictional terrorist group reminiscent of Islamic State, for an episode airing Sunday.