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The UN pension fund for staff members has been mired in problems for years. Now, it is slow-walking reforms, says a close observer. Here, a scene at the UN General Assembly opening session, Sept. 28, 2019. CIA PAK/UN PHOTO
Since 2014, when staff members of the United Nations Pension Fund...
Ambassador Jerry Matthews Matjila of South Africa speaking to reporters outside the UN Security Council, Oct. 9, 2019. As president of the Council for the month, he is taking its members on a trip to Ethiopia and South Sudan. STEPHANIE FILLION
Jerry Matthews Matjila, South Africa’s point...
The Trump administration and its allies in the US Congress have again refused to end their severe restrictions on aid to health programs for women globally, including a repeal of the global gag rule. A protest in the US, above, to protect women’s reproductive rights. CREATIVE COMMONS
For...
A pro-Kurdistan independence rally in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, 2017. Governments missed an opportunity to advance the Sustainable Development Goal on good governance at the recent UN gathering of world leaders as attacks on civil society rise. LEVI CLANCY/CREATIVE...
Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, center, has been the sole voice in the UN system to demand a criminal investigation into resolving the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the American-based journalist who was slaughtered on Oct. 2, 2018. Here...
Progress on the universal Sustainable Development Goals was scrutinized during the UN’s annual opening session of the General Assembly in September, and the news was not good. Some ambitions, like safe sanitation, are not making headway. In India, above, for example, about half of its population...
Prime Minister Khan of Pakistan at the Sept. 24 world leaders’ luncheon, during the UN General Assembly week of high-level speeches. While Khan slipped quietly to his table at the lunch, his nemesis, Prime Minister Modi of India, worked the room. EUROPANEWSWIRE/UNCA POOL
War clouds...
António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, and Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, at the VIP luncheon during the annual UN General Assembly opening session, Sept. 24, 2019. It was Merkel’s first time to the UNGA, as it is called, in four years and may be her last. EUROPANEWSWIRE/UNCA...
A historic first at the UN General Assembly high-level debate: an all-female bench from Norway. From left front row: Prime Minister Erna Solberg; Foreign Minister Ine Marie Eriksen Soreide; Ambassador Mona Juul; and parliamentarians in the back row. NORWAY MISSION TO THE UN
How women’s...
Prime Minister Trudeau addressing the Unifor Constitutional Convention in Quebec City, Aug. 19, 2019. He was not scheduled to come to the UN General Assembly opening session in September, but deciding who would speak in his stead has been a belabored process for Canada.
Prime Minister...
President Trump at the General Assembly lunch, Sept. 24, 2019, only hours before the US House of Representatives announced it would begin an impeachment inquiry of Trump. LI MUZI-XINHUA/UNCA POOL
After most of the world leaders spent a day teaming up to fight climate change at the Climate...
UN Secretary-General Guterres speaking at the opening ceremony of the 2019 Climate Action Summit in the General Assembly Hall, Sept. 23. His first words to the scores of international leaders and others gathered at the conference were: “Nature is angry.” ARIANA LINDQUIST/UN PHOTO
The...
President Emmanuel Macron of France, left, with President Evo Morales of Bolivia at the Alliance for Rainforests event at the UN, which took place in conjunction with the Climate Action Summit, Sept. 23, 2019. RICK BAJORNAS/UN PHOTO
President Emmanuel Macron of France is using one of its...
The UN General Assembly Hall, packed with delegates from across the world’s nations. The diplomats all need to eat, but where, they may ask, in New York City? BASIL D. SONFI/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
New Yorkers know full well to avoid East Midtown Manhattan around mid-September. During those few...
Secretary-General António Guterres giving a toast at the annual heads of state luncheon during the opening session of the UN General Assembly, Sept. 25, 2018. This year, the session will include conferences on climate change, universal health care and the Sustainable Development Goals. And, of...
Hours before the crash that killed UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold (with sunglasses) waiting to board the DC-6 Albertina, Ndjili airport, Léopoldville (now Kinshasa, Congo), Sept. 17, 1961. TARA BURGETT/LONDON DAILY EXPRESS
Fifty-eight years ago, Dag Hammarskjold, the United Nations...
Kersti Kaljulaid, the president of Estonia, after her country’s election to the UN Security Council, June 7, 2019. She is scheduled to speak at the UN General Assembly on Sept. 25. Eastern Europe appears to dominate now with the most female government leaders globally. LOEY FELIPE/UN PHOTO
...The “Chernobyl” tapestry by a Belarusian artist was gifted in 1991 to the United Nations in New York, five years after the cataclysmic nuclear explosion in Ukraine, which also affected Belarus and Russia. Decades later, the world is still unable to fully turn its back on nuclear power in all its...
Lieut. Comdr. Marcia Braga, left, a 45-year-old Brazilian naval officer, spent a year as a UN military gender adviser in the war-wracked Central African Republic, above. She called it “the most rewarding experience she has ever had.” BRAGA ARCHIVES
In one of the world’s most fragile and...
In the Congo, celebrating the International Day of Women’s Rights, 2019. The author of this essay, who led the video unit for the UN mission in the country for nearly five years, warns against the UN forgoing original media programming for social media content. MICHAEL ALI/MONUSCO.
In...
Dmitry Polyanskiy, the deputy permanent representative of Russia to the UN, photographed at the Russian mission, in Manhattan. Polyanskiy was interviewed in August on how his country would lead the UN Security Council in September and on Russian-US relations. STEPHANIE FILLION
...
The United Nations headquarters showcasing the Sustainable Development summit, September 2015. The essayist, an expert in governance and democracy, bemoans the growing participation of multinational corporations in UN system forums. CIA PAK/UN PHOTO
Global governance is slipping away from...
At an entrance to the UN headquarters in New York, Indonesian diplomats passing one of the many signs, including some sterner than others, announcing the ban on single-use plastic in the UN dining areas. DULCIE LEIMBACH
People who regularly work or visit the United Nations headquarters in...
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, center, meeting US embassy staffers and families in Ottawa, Aug. 22, 2019. It was the last day of Kelly Knight Craft, right, as the American ambassador to Canada, yet the US can’t say when she begins her post as ambassador to the UN. ASHLEY FRASER/US EMBASSY
...Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. A new report in Kashmir, which Modi has stripped of its political autonomy, suggests the crackdown in the region may hide abuses against civilians there.
As a communications shutdown is still depriving people in the predominantly Muslim Kashmir...
Helen McKendry with a family photograph showing her mother, Jean McConville, and some of Jean’s children. In 1972, the 38-year-old Belfast woman, a mother of 10, was kidnapped in front of her children and murdered by the IRA. She had been accused of passing information to the British forces. Her...
Kelly Knight Craft, the newly confirmed US ambassador to the UN, with members of the Youth Ambassadors Program at the US embassy in Ottawa, in her former role as US diplomat to Canada, July 16, 2019.
She calls herself a homemaker, a philanthropist and a consultant, but who, exactly, is...
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, second from left, and his entourage about to attend the UN Security Council meeting on peace and security in the Middle East. He talked about Iran’s role in sowing unrest in the region. MANUEL ELIAS/UN PHOTO
In the middle of a muggy August afternoon in...
In Parliament on Aug. 6, 2019, Imran Khan, Pakistan’s leader, called the move by Narendra Modi of India to end the special status of Kashmir “racist.” The UN Security Council met on Aug. 16 to debate the crisis.
A familiar refrain often heard when the burgeoning crisis in Kashmir rises to...
President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil with President Donald Trump of the United States, March 19, 2019, in the White House. Both men are scheduled to attend the annual opening session of the UN General Assembly, which will feature not only the parade of leaders but also a climate-change conference...
David Kaye, the UN special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, addressing the Human Rights Council, June 17, 2015, Geneva. He has written a new book on the global struggle to wrestle with the power of the Internet. JEAN-MARC FERRE/UN PHOTO
David Kaye, a leading...
In Rotterdam, a city that promotes green roofs, a public version includes a cafe, above. The city was recently hit with record-high temperatures as well as record lows for July. JEROEN SPANGENBERG
ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands — Record heat waves have crippled a number of cities this summer...
Police in Kashmir confronting protesters in December 2018. The new plan by India to take full control of Jammu and Kashmir will remake the map of the Himalayan border areas. Pakistan is working on bringing the highly disputed action by India into the UN Security Council. CREATIVE COMMONS
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Joanna Wronecka, Poland’s ambassador to the UN, is president of the Security Council in August. She is known in the UN for speaking Arabic fluently, drawing admiration from that community of diplomats and reporters. Besides Polish, she also speaks English, French and German. DULCIE LEIMBACH...
Pierre Krahenbuhl, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency, which administers to Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, at a conference in Rome, March 2018. The agency, which was significantly rocked by the withdrawal of American donations last year, is now caught up in a possible ethics...
Kelly Knight Craft, hosting an event in Ottawa, June 26, 2019, as US ambassador to Canada. On July 31, she was confirmed by the US Senate to be the next US ambassador to the UN, moving on to New York.
The Senate has confirmed Kelly Knight Craft to be Washington’s top ambassador to the...
Members of the child-protection team from the UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo, participating in a soccer match. The player’s shirt, translated from French, says “child recruitment is a crime.”
Every time the budget committee of the United Nations meets, as it did in June, child-...
Andrew Bremberg, Trump’s nominee as ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. The vote by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on his candidacy has been delayed as a leading Democrat has demanded more details on a separate matter: the White House’s new migration agreements. GAGE SKIDMORE/...
Venezuelan refugees in Boa Vista, Brazil. Immigration apps are being developed rapidly to help refugees and migrants on their journeys and in their new places of settlement. Critics warn about the apps creating a sense of over-optimism about what they can do. MARCELO CAMARGO/AGENCIA BRASIL
...Amina Mohammed, right, the deputy secretary-general of the UN, signed a partnership agreement with the World Economic Forum, led by Borge Brende, left, to speed up progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. António Guterres, the UN secretary-general (behind Mohammed) and Klaus Schwab, the...
Andrew Bremberg at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md. A group of human-rights and global-health nonprofit organizations has recommended that the Senate reject the nomination of Bremberg as US ambassador to the UN in Geneva. GAGE SKIDMORE
Is President...
The vote by the Human Rights Council on July 12, renewing the role of the UN expert on sexual orientation and gender identity and reflecting more global support to protect LGBTIQ rights than in the past, the author writes.
I woke to a flurry of messages from LGBTIQ activists across the...
The lives of women are falling into separate camps internationally: those who live in the wealthiest industrial nations, with progressive laws on abortion, and those in developing countries, where nonprofit health clinics are closing and women have fewer choices. In Nepal, above.
The most...
General Balla Keïta, force commander of the UN mission in Central African Republic, right, awarded a medal of honor from the Portuguese contingent, led by Admiral António Silva Ribeiro, April 13, 2019. The author of the essay foresees no exit strategies for UN peacekeeping missions because of...
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the newly named chair of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, Mary Ann Glendon, right, July 8, 2019. The commission will be operating on the principles of “natural” law and rights, and Glendon has close links to the Vatican. MICHAEL GROSS/STATE DEPARTMENT...
Although the outdoor space of the Riverview Cafeteria at UN headquarters in New York features long views of the East River and parts of the boroughs, the critic found the cafeteria’s food less than thrilling. IRWIN ARIEFF
Six years ago, hungry staff members at the United Nations’ New York...
One of several common spaces in the new Norwegian consulate and mission to the United Nations in New York, located in a high-rise building on the 35th floor, near the UN. The wood-slatted ceiling evokes a rustic Norwegian cottage, a favored destination for people back home. LAURA GUERRERO
...A demonstration outside the Organization of American States in Washington, April 5, 2016, protesting the murder of the Honduran rights defender Berta Cáceres, who was killed a month earlier. Her daughter, Berta Zúñiga Cáceres, is part of the protests. The author of the essay suggests that...
Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, was criticized by hundreds of international human-rights lawyers recently for his “problematic definition of rape,” as expressed in an essay he wrote online about Julian Assange of Wikileaks. JEAN-MARC FERRE/UN PHOTO
A group of several...
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