The problems facing the world—conflict, poverty, human rights issues, refugees and migrants, environmental destruction, and more—are severe. Playing a central role in addressing these issues is the United Nations (hereinafter, the UN), with 193 member states. But how much are the UN and its wide-ranging activities being reported and known? As GNV has previously reported, Japan’s international news coverage is sparse overall and heavily skewed by region and topic. So what about coverage of the UN? Is it similarly underreported? In reality, in which regions and on what issues is the UN mainly active? We would like to analyze how much reporting on the UN differs from its actual activities.

United Nations headquarters in Geneva with the flags of member states lined up (Photo: UN Photo / Jean-Marc Ferré [CC BY-ND 2.0])

What is the UN

The UN has six principal organs: the General Assembly, in which all Member States participate; the Security Council, which discusses conflict and peace; the Secretariat, the bureaucracy composed of international civil servants; the International Court of Justice, which adjudicates disputes between states; plus the Economic and Social Council and the Trusteeship Council. In addition, 15 specialized agencies such as the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as well as many programmes, funds, and other bodies, together make up the United Nations system (the UN family). Furthermore, in regions that remain unstable after conflict, peacekeeping operations (PKO) are conducted, with more than 100,000 soldiers and police from 124 countries active around the world. As noted above, beyond security, the areas of activity are diverse, including refugees and migrants, development, human rights, health care, and the environment. The UN works worldwide, but Africa and the Middle East—where conflicts, refugee issues, and poverty are particularly severe—account for a large share of its activities.

UN activities seen through volume of coverage

So, what kind of UN emerges through media coverage? We analyzed Asahi Shimbun’s UN reporting over the two years from 2016 to 2017 (Note 1). The UN Information Centre currently publishes articles on UN activities as UN News. Let’s compare the main activities that the UN (Secretariat) itself emphasizes (UN News) with the UN activities emphasized by Asahi Shimbun. The graphs below categorize UN activities, following UN News’ classification, into the fields of security, human rights, economic development, health, humanitarian assistance, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), migration and refugees, climate change, internal UN matters, law, and women.

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Both UN News and Asahi Shimbun had security as the top category. In UN News, PKO activities in Africa and peace talks in the Middle East and Afghanistan were frequently covered. Asahi Shimbun devoted an overwhelming amount to security—47,530 characters, about 70% of the total 67,784. As discussed in the next graph, a major factor was that North Korea’s nuclear issue was reported frequently in 2017. While health was among the top categories in UN News, with articles on WHO activities, infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and cholera, and vaccines, Asahi Shimbun had zero characters in this category. Migration/refugees was covered relatively often by Asahi Shimbun as well. UN News had many articles on Africa, whereas Asahi Shimbun had none on Africa; instead, it focused on Palestinian refugees and stories about countries neighboring Syria groaning under the burden of accepting refugees. Conversely, articles on women—a category that was less covered by UN News and did not make its top 10—totaled over 3,000 characters in Asahi Shimbun. These concerned recommendations issued to Japan by a UN committee on eliminating discrimination against women, noting that despite repeated recommendations Japan has not ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Also, Asahi Shimbun carried more coverage of internal UN matters than UN News, largely articles about the Secretary-General and candidates for the next Secretary-General.

Differences within the security coverage

Let’s take a closer look at articles on security, the category with overwhelmingly the most coverage. The following graph compares Asahi Shimbun to the top 10 subtopics within security covered by UN News.

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As you can see, both had security at the top, but the contents differed greatly. UN News frequently covered Security Council resolutions on issues in Africa and the Middle East, PKO activities, and Middle East peace talks. In contrast, Asahi Shimbun put sanctions and nuclear issues—topics that received relatively little attention in UN News—at the top; the character count for articles on the second-ranked topic, nuclear issues, was more than double that of the third-ranked topic, peace talks. While the Security Council has imposed sanctions on over a dozen countries, of the 16 articles on sanctions, 14 concerned sanctions on North Korea related to its nuclear issue. Articles in the second-ranked nuclear category often dealt with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and speeches about them. Reasons include criticism that Japan, under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, has not joined the prohibition treaty, and the fact that nearby North Korea’s repeated nuclear development and tests have made nuclear missiles a major threat to Japan’s security. In the third-ranked peace talks category, many articles concerned the Syrian peace talks.

PKO reporting biases

Now, within the security field, let’s compare in more detail PKO, one of the UN’s main activities. The graph below compares the current scale of PKO activities with their media coverage (Note 2).

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Surprisingly, in this analysis there were no articles on PKO activities in countries other than South Sudan, where Japan had deployed personnel at the time. In reality, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan (Darfur) have larger deployments than South Sudan, and Mali, the Central African Republic, and Lebanon also each have over 10,000 personnel deployed to PKO, similar to South Sudan. South Sudan—which dominated Asahi Shimbun’s PKO coverage—gained independence from Sudan in 2011, but conflict continued thereafter. UNMISS (United Nations Mission in South Sudan) was established in 2011, and about 17,000 troops were deployed by the UN. Of these, Japan dispatched about 300 Self-Defense Forces personnel between 2011 and 2017, and thus the issue was frequently reported in Japan from a Japanese perspective.

PKO activities that are not reported

Then what is the reality in the top recipient countries of PKO deployments that went unreported? In first place, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has experienced since 1998 a conflict that has claimed an estimated more than 5.4 million lives—the highest death toll in the world since the Korean War. MONUC (United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) was established in 1999 and began operations the following year, and to this day over 20,000 personnel are deployed. In second place, Sudan saw the Darfur conflict intensify around 2003, generating large numbers of refugees and armed groups. In 2007, UNAMID (African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur) was established, and around 19,000 personnel were deployed. In fourth place, the Republic of Mali saw the growth of anti-government forces from 2012 and a deterioration in public security. In April 2013, MINUSMA (United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali) was established, and over 14,000 personnel were deployed. The Central African Republic, in fifth place, saw a temporary improvement in security around 2014, but conditions worsened again from 2017. As a result, compared to three years earlier, PKO deployments increased by about 4,000, to more than 13,000. In Lebanon, clashes between the armed group Hezbollah and Israel have occurred in the south, and since 2007 UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) has been in place. Over 10,000 personnel are deployed, monitoring the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.

As seen above, although much goes unreported, large-scale conflicts and large-scale PKO operations are taking place in countries other than South Sudan as well. PKO troops are also sometimes attacked and killed. For example, on December 8, 2017, 14 PKO personnel were killed and 53 wounded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in what became the worst attack on PKO forces in recent years.

Regional biases seen through volume of coverage

So where in the world is attention concentrated in reporting on the UN? Various biases are already apparent above, but what does it look like by region? Here is a comparison between the number of UN News articles and Asahi Shimbun’s character counts.

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As noted earlier, the top four countries by PKO deployment were all in Africa. Yet, as you can see, while Africa topped UN News coverage, in Japan’s international reporting Africa ranked fourth out of five regions. The graph below shows Asahi Shimbun’s top 10 by country.

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North Korea ranked first because the UN’s stance on its nuclear program and sanctions was covered extensively. Second-place South Korea had many articles about developments at UN committees concerning the comfort women issue. Third-place North and South America consisted almost entirely of articles about the United States—mostly about UN resolutions on U.S. sanctions against North Korea and stories that former President Obama was seeking a Security Council resolution on banning nuclear tests. The only article on the Americas outside the United States was a comment by Argentina’s foreign minister, a candidate for UN Secretary-General. Notably, the fourth-ranked Africa category consisted solely of articles on South Sudan. In other words, the regional and country-level graphs show that in Japan’s UN coverage, a single country—the United States—receives more attention than the whole of Africa, where UN activity is overwhelmingly concentrated. Fifth-place Syria was mostly about the UN-led peace talks struggling to make progress. Meanwhile, UN News frequently covered UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) in Afghanistan, Israel–Palestine peace talks, and PKO activities in Mali and the Central African Republic, but none of these countries ranked in Asahi Shimbun’s coverage.

PKO activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; female personnel patrol (Photo: MONUSCO Photos / Flickr [ CC BY-SA 2.0])

In international news coverage, it may be inevitable that attention concentrates on regions where news organizations are based. As “Japan’s” international reporting, it likely focuses on Asia, geographically close, and on countries more closely tied to Japan. But should reporting on the UN—which exists to tackle international issues worldwide—be this skewed as well? At present, for Africa, which accounts for a large part of UN activity, only one country that had a small Japanese PKO deployment is being reported. Activities in Latin America are likewise not mentioned at all in this survey. Under such circumstances, it is questionable whether the media can convey the existence of the “UN” and the overall picture of its activities. To understand the current international situation, reporting needs to show where the UN is active, for what purpose, and what it is doing—without being biased toward one’s own country.

Note 1: We selected articles whose headlines included the characters for “UN.” The analysis of Asahi Shimbun covers the morning print edition only and does not include Asahi Digital. Some articles that introduce UN activities do not have “UN” in the headline, but these are not included in this analysis.

Note 2: The number of PKO deployments is based on data as of August 31, 2017.

Writer: Mizuki Uchiyama

Graphics: Mizuki Uchiyama