The annual Commission on the Status of Women, 2019. This year’s meeting, March 9-20, could be as contentious on such sensitive topics as reproductive health rights as they were last year. This time, however, the session reviews the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the global blueprint for empowering women. Serious gaps remain on gender equality. RYAN BROWN/UN WOMEN
President Trump, with Vice President Pence, White House advisers and military personnel, speaking on Jan. 8, 2020, about Iran’s missile strikes against Iraqi military bases housing US troops, days after Trump ordered the killing of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. Much of the current crisis, the author writes in an analysis, stems from Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Iran nuclear deal. WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
Secretary-General António Guterres arriving at the Security Council meeting on upholding the United Nations Charter, Jan. 9, 2020. The debate was scheduled long before the recent US-Iran attacks, but those alarming actions were referred to directly or alluded to by member states as discouragement prevailed. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO
A UN Development Program workshop on gender and disaster-risk reduction related to climate change, Cambodia, August 2019. In an essay, an expert on the UN development system says it “cries out for reform” but is stuck in inertia. MANUTH BUTH/UNDP CAMBODIA
A refugee with the documents he needs to go from Greece into what is now called North Macedonia, 2015. Over the next two years, scores of countries will conduct censuses, and they will need to include migration data. That collection of information will be difficult but essential for societies to function optimally. STEVE EVANS/CREATIVE COMMONS
Rosemary DiCarlo, the highest-ranking US official at the UN, is the first person to lead the newly created Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. Being the first woman in the post, she said, is a “heavy burden,” as she acts as a model for aspiring men and women at the organization. JOE PENNEY
Kelly Knight Craft, the US envoy to the UN, leads the Security Council in December. She said she wanted to restore “credibility” to the Council. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO
GLASGOW, Kentucky — “There’s no place like home for the holidays” is the United States’ theme for the Security Council presidency in December, while at the same time, in a slight contradiction, the US wants to tackle the problem of the Council’s credibility.
As human-rights protections slip worldwide, the authors argue that the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in a group photo, October 2019, above, can establish a “critical link between international agreements and domestic progress on human-rights issues.”
The chorus of New York City’s Public School 22 performing at the General Assembly celebration marking the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Nov. 29, 2019. The US and five other countries that make up the bulk of dues to the UN general budget are behind on payments, some for years. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO
Ambassador Karen Pierce of Britain in the Security Council with Riyad Mansour, center, Palestine’s envoy to the UN, May 15, 2018. Britain’s theme for its Council presidency is the effects of conflict on ordinary people, not a controversial issue. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
