Swedes have rising confidence in their national institutions, with the monarchy, parliament and government all gaining. But while the healthcare system, police and the royals all inspire confidence, unions and the EU leave people unimpressed.
Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has been awarded the 2006 Olof Palme Prize, following his retirement from the post after ten years at the top.
Sweden is to offer a coastal patrol vessel to an expanded UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon but will not contribute ground troops, the government said on Thursday.
Swedish foreign minister Jan Eliasson has said it would be regrettable if the Swedish government had prioritized Swedish business interests over acting to stop corruption in the United Nations' Oil-for-Food program. His comments came after it emerged that Sweden knew of illegal payments from companies to the Iraqi regime, but doing nothing to stop them.
Some 14 Swedish firms are under investigation for violating the United Nations’ sanctions under the Oil-for-Food Programme by paying Iraq illegal fees to do business in the country. Now the Swedish government is being drawn into the fray for reportedly knowing about the illegal payoffs and not stopping them.
Sweden has told the United Nations that its current legal framework does not enable it to imprison Liberia's ex-president Charles Taylor if he is convicted of crimes against humanity, the foreign ministry said on Thursday.
The United Nations has asked Sweden among other countries to consider accepting Liberia's ex-president Charles Taylor as a prisoner if he is convicted of crimes against humanity, a Swedish official has confirmed.
Sweden will carry out a probe of a UN detention unit here where former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic died three weeks ago, the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said on Friday.
Sweden's parliament voted on Wednesday to increase the number of troops the country contributes to a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Afghanistan from the current 100 soldiers to 375.
A network of countries established to help UN reforms efforts held its first meeting on Tuesday and Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson pledged that the group would to release concrete proposals.
Sweden and other EU countries are finding it hard to attract overseas investment. The cash is going to growth economies such as China and India instead, according to a report on global investment by the UN's trade organisation, UNCTAD.
Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson, who co-chaired a recent UN summit in New York, said on Wednesday he had created a network of world leaders to help implement the reforms agreed by the world body.
Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson has opened the world's largest summit which is set to approve a watered-down blueprint to restructure the embattled United Nations on its 60th anniversary.
The Swedish government received yet another setback in the on-going controversy over their deportation of two suspected terrorists to Egypt. The foreign ministry had hoped that the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, would investigate the case and establish once and for all whether the men were tortured on their return to their home country.
The United Nations General Assembly on Monday elected Swedish diplomat Jan Eliasson as president for the organization's 60th session, which will open in September.
