Fierce national competition over water resources has prompted fears that water issues contain the seeds of violent conflict.

Under international law, the responsibility for protecting civilians in conflict falls on the belligerents. Under military occupation, responsibility for the welfare of the population falls on the occupiers.

Elections with integrity are a challenge everywhere, including in the West.

The U.N. power comes from concerted action of the governments.

Ameen Rihani, one of the earliest Arab Americans, devoted his life to bringing the East and the West together. We are not of the East or the West, he wrote. No boundaries exist in our breast: We are free.

You may have noticed over the years that the UN became a bit more media-friendly, a bit more open to the media than in the past.

Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.