Ireland’s foreign service is relatively small, with 80 representations, and comparatively thinly spread, with an average of one to two people in each post. But it is talented, flexible and normally led by generalists well able to represent the State in a great variety of international settings.

A Russian initiative to host peace talks this month between the Syrian government and its opponents appears to be unraveling as prominent Syrian opposition figures shun the prospective negotiations amid deep distrust of Moscow and concerns the talks hold no chance of success.

More than 100,000 people have been displaced by flooding in Malawi, and scores have died there and in neighboring Mozambique after weeks of rain, officials said Friday. The United Nations World Food Program said it plans to airlift more than 100 metric tons of food to the southern African country Malawi to feed at least 77,000.

Israel's advanced technology developments have become its most prominent soft power tool for boosting diplomatic ties and improving its position in the world, enhancing its own security in the process. 

In a move that heightened tensions with Israel and could lead to cuts in U.S. aid, the Palestinians on Friday delivered to U.N. headquarters documents on joining the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and other international treaties.

Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs, has said that the final report of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (DAC/OECD), released earlier this week, has affirmed the UAE’s worthiness to win the first position as the world’s largest donor country of official development assistance (ODA) in proportion to its gross national income (ODA/GNI ratio)(...)

The United Nations set ambitious goals in 2000 to reduce global poverty and inequality by 2015, and while it successfully cut extreme poverty in half, the multinational group is conflicted about how much developing regions such as sub-Saharan Africa can improve by 2030.

2014 was replete with conflicts, crises and contingencies that forced the United Nations to face some of its most difficult challenges in recent history.