The General Assembly elected five nations to two-year terms on the Security Council, starting on Jan. 1, 2019: Belgium, Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa. Heiko Mass (left), Germany’s foreign minister, congratulates Christoph Heusgen, his country’s ambassador to the UN. Walter Lindner, state secretary of Germany, right; June 8, 2018. MANUEL ELIAS/UN PHOTO
Heather Nauert, center, in Helsinki, July 16, 2018. In December, Trump said he was nominating Nauert to succeed Nikki Haley as US ambassador to the UN, but the White House hasn’t sent the formal nomination to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which holds the confirmation hearing. STATE DEPARTMENT
At a Teatime for Peace gathering, a program of the Cleveland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, people of various faiths talk about their religion openly to help overcome differences and dispel myths.
Nigerien troops patrolling outside Dirkou, Niger, Aug. 6, 2018, a key transit hub near the border of Libya. The author describes how the G5 Sahel force, a French initiative to combat jihadists in the Sahel region, is struggling to be useful as violence in the area soars. JOE PENNEY
BAMAKO, Mali — The G5 Sahel Force was conceived to enable greater coordination among five countries in the Sahel region of West Africa in fighting jihadist groups and to strengthen regional administration and development while relieving the United Nations mission in Mali of those burdens.
A Sahrawi refugee at a camp near Tindouf, Algeria, 2016. A new UN envoy is taking a stab at ending the frozen conflict over the status of the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara territory of the indigenous Sahrawi people, prodded by the United States. EVAN SCHNEIDER/UN PHOTO
A memorial service was held for the six peacekeepers from Malawi and one from Tanzania who died during clashes with the ADF militia in the Congo on Nov. 15, 2018. Seventeen members of the same UN force intervention brigade were killed nearly a year ago battling the ADF. MIRIAM ASMANI/MONUSCO
United Nations peacekeepers working for the mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were killed by a militia in a jungle in North Kivu Province on Nov. 15, leaving seven soldiers dead: six Malawians and one Tanzanian. Ten were injured.
President Trump with, from left, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, at the G7 lunch in Canada, June 9, 2018. The author suggests Japan should work closely with Europe to uphold the UN and multilateralism amid the US void.
A road traffic company, made up of the Central African National police with assistance from UN police, above, regulates traffic and writes accident reports in the capital, Bangui. The country is on the verge of either a breakthrough to peace or relapsing into a civil war. HERVE SEREFIO/MINUSCA
Migrants in the Abu Salim detention center, in southern Tripoli, holding about 1,200 people and run by the Libyan interior ministry. Of such centers, it is considered one of the better managed in the country.
Activists in London, June 2018, protesting the war in Yemen. Aircraft flown by Saudi coalition pilots but serviced by British and Americans and armed with their bombs, have been targeting Yemeni civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and, for a year, the main port in Hodeidah, through which 70 percent of Yemeni aid flows, starving the country. ALISDARE HICKSON/CREATIVE COMMONS
