With the close of 2016 comes the end of New Zealand’s tenure on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Considering the campaign to be elected to this position by other countries began in 2004, our two-year term on the most powerful body within the United Nations has seemed relatively brief.

In October 2014 New Zealand was elected to a two-year term as a temporary member of the UN Security Council (UNSC), representing the “Western Europe and Others” regional voting bloc.  With Turkey and Spain as New Zealand’s main rivals for the position, the win had as much to do with

In October 2014 New Zealand was preparing for its two-year term on the UN Security Council. Meanwhile, Prime Minister John Key was making an unconvincing case for sending soldiers to Iraq in a training capacity to assist with the fight against the Islamic State. And unarmed civilians were being killed

In May 2015, the world witnessed appalling scenes of fishing boats crammed with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh being pushed back to sea by Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Desperate men, women and children were left without food and medical care for a week, before the Philippines

The last time New Zealand held a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the Rwandan genocide happened. During March and April 1994, the Security Council failed to heed warnings of what became “one of the darkest chapters in human history,” as UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson recently called it.