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The Security Council virtual meeting on June 30, debating the status of the Iran nuclear deal’s arms embargo, which expires Oct. 18, 2020. US Secretary of State Pompeo attended briefly, above, to make his pitch to keep the ban. He met resistance, as expected, from members.
The United...
Secretary of State Pompeo leaving the Pearl Harbor-Hickam joint base in Honolulu, June 17, 2020, after meeting with Chinese officials. Amid rising Covid-19 cases and nationwide protests against racial injustices, President Trump has been golfing and tweeting white supremacist slogans. RON...
President Trump and John Bolton, his national security adviser, at a meet-and-greet with US military stationed in Britain; Portsmouth, June 5, 2019. In Bolton’s new book, he offers plenty of “snide” comments about such people as Nikki Haley, a former US envoy to the UN, like Bolton. SHEALAH...
While Secretary-General António Guterres held a virtual press briefing on June 25, his spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, above, moderated. Guterres spoke about the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Charter and the relentless devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. MANUEL ELIAS/...
Mary Robinson, chair of The Elders, an organization of eminent leaders, attending a youth world summit in London, 2019, with Manoly Sisavanh of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Laos. What do older statespeople and those ready to inherit the earth feel about the UN on its 75th birthday? That...
President Vladimir Putin delivering a speech at the first Russia-Africa summit, October 2019, in Sochi. In a new essay he wrote for the American magazine National Interest, Putin praises the original agreements among the big three powers who created the UN for keeping “confrontation under...
On June 17, 2020, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, left, the current president of the General Assembly, announced the results of numerous elections by webcast and to an empty Assembly Hall; Movses Abelian, a UN official, right. The UN celebrates its 75th birthday on June 26, 2020, marked by a declaration...
In France, the lockdown that began in mid-March in the pandemic was partly lifted two months later and is almost entirely over now. The French were depicted by the media, the author says, as undisciplined when compared with their European neighbors. Paris, above, in June. SIDONIE CHAUMETTE
...Katalin Bogyay, the ambassador of Hungary to the UN, about to cast her secret ballots for the elections in the General Assembly Hall, June 17, 2020. The process required new procedures amid the pandemic, but it went well by all accounts. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
Starting in June, a...
The Covid-19 pandemic’s effects on poor countries is hitting children hard, forcing some of them to work while navigating unsavory home lives. In wars, children’s status is worse than ever. Here, in Madagascar, the health system is strained and schools are closed. HENITSOA RAFALIA/WORLD BANK...
Kelly Craft, the US envoy to the UN, arriving in the morning at the General Assembly Hall to cast her country’s secret ballot for various UN elections, June 17, 2020. By the afternoon, the new members of the Security Council were announced: India, Ireland, Mexico and Norway. The race between...
Malcolm X was an American Muslim minister and iconic human-rights activist who was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965, at age 39, in New York City. In his work, he had tried to globalize the civil rights movement in the United States by bringing the cause to the United Nations. TASNIM NEWS AGENCY...
Unicef and the World Health Organization sponsor free vaccination programs on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, reaching tens of thousands of children each month. The programs could be jeopardized by the US withdrawal from the WHO. JIM HUYLEBROEK/UNICEF
Already struggling with a surging...
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, at UN headquarters after King was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. With them is Ralph Bunche, a UN official who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. Bunche, an American, marched with the Kings in civil rights protests in...
A view of Panama City from the apartment of the author, a former vice president and foreign minister of Panama. The country is slowly reopening after months of lockdown, although the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases keeps rising. ISABEL SAINT MALO
PANAMA CITY, Panama — March 2 marked...
Joe Biden, right, the likely Democratic Party nominee for US president, and community leaders at Bethel A.M.E. Church, Wilmington, Del., June 1, 2020. Besides the pandemic, a wrecked economy and public protests nationwide, Biden will have to repair US international relations if he wins the race...
The Rev. Ralph Abernathy, far left, Ralph Bunche (with glasses), the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Coretta Scott King in the Selma march, 1965. Bunche, a UN official, told marchers that the UN supported their cause. BRUCE DAVIDSON/COURTESY HOWARD GREENBERG GALLERY
As the world knows,...
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, May 2020. One new report from the UN agency expresses concern about Iran’s blocking access to certain sites and another report confirms the country’s increased uranium enrichment activities. DEAN CALMA/IAEA
VIENNA — The...
Protesters in Washington Square Park, Manhattan, one of dozens of such gatherings throughout New York City in the last week responding to the murder of George Floyd, the African-American, on May. 25. The UN kept its distance from the protests. ISABELLA PENNEY
Starting in June, a summary...
A view of the General Assembly Hall through an interpreters’ booth, before the opening of the general debate of the 74th session, Sept. 24, 2019. It is unclear how world leaders will meet this year, but more important, diplomacy-as-usual practices are over, the authors say. MANUEL ELIAS/UN PHOTO...
In New York City, protesters swarm the roadway portion of the Brooklyn Bridge, heading from the City Hall area of lower Manhattan into Brooklyn. The crowd stopped incoming traffic, but there was no violence, May 30, 2020. JOHN PENNEY
Amid curfews in New York City, constant marches and...
Secretary-General António Guterres about to sign a book of condolences in memory of former Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, who died on March 4, 2020, at 100. The UN marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter in June. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO
Seventy-five years ago...
A screen grab of Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière of France participating in a videoconference of the UN Security Council on Syria, April 29, 2020. As president of the Council in June, he intends to speak only in French in public sessions, as multilingualism in the Council, he said, has suffered...
Trump returning to the White House on May 17, 2020, after a weekend at Camp David, in Maryland. On May 29, amidst the pandemic, the US president announced he was withdrawing from the World Health Organization, the globe’s most important public health body. TIA DUFOUR/WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
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A farmworker in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Poor countries heavily dependent on foreign aid have received some debt emergency relief by official global lenders during the pandemic. But that opportunity can also open channels for corruption, the author says, making transparency imperative.
Fears...
Clashes between Arab and African ethnic groups erupted in West Darfur late last year, reportedly leaving at least 65 people dead and thousands homeless, like the woman above. The author, a refugee from the region, pleads for the continuing presence of international peacekeepers amid Security...
The Women’s March, 2017, above. A new campaign led by women in the United States with global experience are advocating that a feminist foreign policy be instituted in all branches of the federal government, regardless of national politics. JOHN JACK/CREATIVE COMMONS
The world of diplomacy...
A man who washes cars taking a break at his business in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Although the country has only about 100 recorded cases of Covid-19 now, its lacks a proper health care system to deal with the pandemic as it intensifies. Elections in June could further complicate the...
The delegation of Mauritius at the General Assembly session that adopted a resolution asking the International Court of Justice to render an advisory opinion on the legality of the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, June 22, 2017. Exactly a...
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Israel, May 13, 2020. He says the US plans to extend the arms embargo in the Iran nuclear deal, but it must go through the UN Security Council to do so. Members appear ready to push back. RON PRZYSUCHA/STATE DEPARTMENT
The Trump administration may be...
A scientist extracting the coronavirus genome in a UN lab in Seibersdorf, Austria, May 7, 2020. Testing kits to detect Covid-19 are being sent free by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency to a range of developing countries. DEAN CALMA/IAEA
VIENNA — When President Trump...
Dr. Jillann Farmer, the UN medical director for more than seven years, has returned to Australia to work for the Department of Health in Queensland. She led the UN’s internal health care system through such crises as the Ebola outbreak in 2014, but the coronavirus pandemic required the UN’s...
Kelly Craft, the United States ambassador to the UN and previously US envoy to Canada, with her husband, Joseph Craft III, at a reception in Ottawa, Oct. 15, 2018. The value of Joseph Craft’s holdings in his energy company has dropped by more than $300 million in the last year. US EMBASSY CANADA...
Latin American women have always suffered from an epidemic of violence, but Covid-19 has brought hope that new protections could help stem that tide. Women performing “A Rapist in Your Path,” in Mexico City, a feminist anthem that originated in Chile. CREATIVE COMMONS
Long before Covid-19...
Chile has so far 31,721 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 335 deaths. The author, a public health doctor in Santiago, says he loves working in the “thick of things,” but the risks are high as well. SANTIAGO TIMES
SANTIAGO, Chile — I live here in the capital, in the south of the world, with...
Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, prepping for a virtual press briefing with him, April 30, 2020, UN headquarters. The secretary-general had asked the current UN medical director, Dr. Jillann Farmer, to extend her term a few months during the...
Samantha Buonvino, above, is a civilian peacekeeper working for the UN in Mali. Her job is to get to know the community of Gao, where she is based, but the UN is under lockdown there, presenting not more “suffering,” she said, but just an “extra challenge.”
Far from United Nations...
Secretary-General António Guterres holds a virtual press conference to promote a report on his call for a global cease-fire during the Covid-19 outbreak, April 3, 2020. A Security Council draft resolution supporting his call was knocked down by the US on May 8, facing a low chance for revival. ...
Billions of people have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the unprecedented nature of the economic and health crisis could quickly turn into a housing crisis, the author writes. Many advocacy groups and others are proposing ways to avert such a disaster as well as to help people...
In Geneva’s city center at dusk, May 7, 2020. It turns out that when a society collapses, say, during a pandemic, the author writes, “it’s really important to know your neighbors.” PETER MCCAREY
GENEVA — If your idea of normal is Glasgow or New York City, you might think, Geneva is in...
Kelly Craft, US envoy to the UN, saying farewell to Karen Pierce, her British counterpart and now the UK ambassador to the US, March 12, 2020. It was the last day the Security Council met physically as the UN shut down days later. LOEY FELIPE/UN PHOTO
This fall, the United Nations will...
Michael Edeh, a peacekeeping officer enhancing his skills working for the UN-African Union mission in Darfur, Sudan, through an e-learning program. Demand for virtual training has become suddenly more critical as Covid-19 keeps spreading and national training centers are being shut down.
...As part of standard procedures in UN General Assembly elections, officials hold up empty ballot boxes for inspection by teller delegates, before collecting member states’ ballots. The pandemic has forced new methods on Assembly voting as the UN stays physically shut until the end of June for now...
A photo taken recently from the author’s balcony, in Cornet Chahwan, Lebanon, with Beirut in the distance. He writes that being quarantined at home means he can “finally breathe fresh air” as the sky is no longer tainted by the nitrogen-dioxide inversion on the horizon. Yet the country is...
President Trump at a coronavirus update briefing, April 13, 2020. His attack on the WHO could backfire, the author argues, especially if the new pro-WHO coalition develops a vaccine before the US does. D. MYLES CULLEN/WHITE HOUSE
Just how crazy is Donald Trump’s campaign to punish the...
The Estonian delegation reacting to their country’s election to the Security Council for a two-year term, a first for the young Baltic country. In New York, above, President Kersti Kaljulaid being hugged by Sven Jurgenson, the ambassador to the United Nations, June 7, 2019. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN...
Secretary-General António Guterres recording a video message in the UNTV studio, in New York, on the pandemic’s effects on children, April 16, 2020. Soon after Guterres recently announced the resignation of the head of the UN staff pension fund, worth $63 billion, he reaffirmed his commitment to...
The Chamberí District, Madrid, April 27, 2020. The author, a former Argentine foreign minister who is living and working in Madrid, notes the “solitude” of the city at the end of the day, but says that the country has been responding to the pandemic with “solidarity.” SUSANA MALCORRA
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Bodies being buried on New York’s Hart Island, where the Department of Corrections is dealing with more burials amid the coronavirus outbreak, April 2020. LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS
As the new coronavirus disease, Covid-19, continues to threaten lives and livelihoods around the world, many...
Chinatown in Singapore. March 19, 2020. The city-state, the author says, is known for its world-class health system, but in its strong response to the coronavirus pandemic, it had overlooked a crucial segment of society that enables its prosperity: migrants. ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
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