Catch up on GZERO's coverage of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 78)
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Can the US be a global leader on human rights?
Can the US be a global leader on human rights? | UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield | GZERO World

Can the US be a global leader on human rights?

Is it difficult to be a global leader on human rights when the US is facing such a challenging and divisive political environment?

GZERO World sat down with US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield at UN headquarters in New York ahead of the US taking over presidency of the Security Council for the month of August.

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Ambassador of Russia Vassily Nebenzia at the UN

Sipa USA

Russian UN veto cuts aid deliveries to northwest Syria

Russia has voted down a UN Security Council resolution that would have extended a land border crossing needed to deliver crucial humanitarian aid from Turkey into northwestern Syria.

The Bab al-Hawa crossing is used by UN aid convoys to cross into Syria and is the main lifeline for around 4.5 million Syrians, many of whom have been displaced from other parts of the country during the brutal civil war that broke out a decade ago. (The UN says it has been providing aid to a whopping 2.7 million Syrians a month there.)

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Syria'n President Bashar Assad

GZERO Media

Once frozen out, Bashar Assad is back in

Over the past decade, few Arab leaders have been willing to go anywhere near Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Sure, he managed to hold on to a few friends – like Iran and Russia – but for the most part, the Syrian president, broadly dubbed “The Butcher” for waging a war on his own people, has been considered persona non grata by regional bigwigs.

But Assad is now being embraced by many who had once vowed to continue treating him as a pariah. In recent weeks, Assad enjoyed the royal treatment when he attended an Arab League summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for the first time in over a decade, while a top Syrian official also rubbed shoulders with international diplomats at a World Health Organization summit in Geneva last week.

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Syria's President Bashar al-Assad chats with Prince Badr bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz

REUTERS

Assad welcomed back to Saudi

Bashar Assad was warmly welcomed in Saudi Arabia on Thursday when he landed in Jeddah for an Arab League summit. It’s the first time the Syrian dictator has been welcomed to the Gulf since he began waging war against his own people in 2011.
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Ukrainian offensive tests Russian defenses
Ukrainian offensive tests Russian defenses | World In :60 | GZERO Media

Ukrainian offensive tests Russian defenses

How is the Ukrainian counteroffensive going? Pro-democracy opposition parties swept the Thai elections. Will they be allowed to govern? Is Assad's invitation to COP28 a sign of Syria's return to the global stage? Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.

How is the Ukrainian counteroffensive going?

Well, it's just started. It's a little premature to ask me that question. Right now you're looking at probing attacks, artillery for the Ukrainians to try to assess where Russian defenses might be weakest so that when Zelensky gives the order for the full counteroffensive, it's starting, but not with masses of troops, that it's most likely to succeed. There is general optimism right now. The Russians are dug in along three lines of defense in southeast Ukraine. There's pretty significant optimism the Ukrainians will be able to break through one, at least maybe two of those lines of defense, which puts them in striking distance of artillery of the coast of the Sea of Azov, which means being able to threaten the land bridge to Crimea. That's a pretty big deal. It improves Ukraine's ability to negotiate if that happens after the counteroffensive is over.

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84 million tablets with the "captagon" logo, produced in Syria by ISIS to finance terrorism.

Jordan's war on drugs ... in Syria

Can you imagine the DEA fighting the Sinaloa cartel by firing rockets over the Mexican border? Well, that's what Jordan just did with a suspected drug kingpin operating inside Syria.

Early on Monday, a rare flurry of Jordanian airstrikes inside neighboring Syria killed Merhi al-Ramthan, wanted by Amman for alleged cross-border smuggling of Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine similar to speed. Over the past decade, Captagon has become the most popular drug in the Middle East — raking in billions of dollars for the Syrian army, which mass-produces the pills in cahoots with the regime’s inner circle.

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Print photocopies of Benjamin Ferencz, while he served as a prosecutor during the Nuremberg trials, on a table at his home in Delray Beach, Florida on June 1, 2022.

USA Today Network via Reuters Connect

Nuremberg now: the legacy of Ben Ferencz

At 27 years old, with no trial experience to speak of, Ben Ferencz entered the courtroom at Nuremberg in November of 1945. He was tasked with holding to account a regime that had slaughtered millions and tried to annihilate his own people. Acting as chief prosecutor, Ferencz secured convictions against 22 Nazis.

Ferencz, the last-surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, passed away last week at the age of 103. As a child, he and his family fled anti-semitism in Romania. After finishing law school at Harvard, he joined the US army, taking part in the Normandy landings and the Battle of the Bulge. He was then assigned to General Patton’s HQ as part of a special unit investigating Nazi atrocities, interviewing survivors and witnessing first-hand the horrors of the concentration camps. That experience would shape the rest of his life. He would remain a warrior, not on the battlefield but in the public arena as a professor of international law and tireless campaigner for justice for the victims of genocide.

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Earthquakes expose political and humanitarian challenges in Turkey and Syria
Earthquakes expose political and humanitarian challenges in Turkey and Syria | GZERO World

Earthquakes expose political and humanitarian challenges in Turkey and Syria

In a recent episode of GZERO World, the International Rescue Committee's President and CEO, David Miliband, sheds light on the immense challenges of delivering aid in the aftermath of the deadly earthquakes that rocked Turkey and Syria. With the northwest of Syria controlled by armed opposition groups, aid delivery remains a hurdle that needs to be overcome urgently.

Miliband highlights the compounded crises in Syria, with inadequate medical care, cholera outbreaks, freezing temperatures, and ongoing border skirmishes threatening the survival of the population. He notes, "Hope is hard to find if you live there."

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