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
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-protection advocates enter a familiar existential crisis: will the United States and China cut UN budgets specifically allocated to specialists on child protection in peacekeeping missions?
The aftermath of a terrorist attack in northern Mali. A new survey of Malians finds that they back their own armed forces more than they do the UN peacekeepers in their nation, revealing frustrations about their role.
Michael Sharp and Zaida Catalán in a UN conference room in New York, date unknown. The two UN experts were murdered in 2017 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and their deaths have never been fully solved. Zobel Behalal, nameplate above, was also a member of the UN experts group working in the country.
Simon Handy, who specializes in African politics and conflict, worked for the UN in the Central African Republic, during its most violent upheaval. The experience still haunts him. SOUTHERN AFRICAN LIAISON OFFICE
A possible peace deal in the pipeline as the Dinkas and Murles in Jonglei, South Sudan, agree to end age-old hostilities, March 28, 2019. The US is withholding its agreed-on share of UN peacekeeping dues that go to such missions as the one in South Sudan. UNMISS/UN PHOTO
A wave of new or persistent accusations of harassment and corruption in some UN system agencies and programs reflects poor management and more politicization of high-level appointments demanded by UN member nations. Here, the UN headquarters.
Christoph Heusgen, Germany’s ambassador to the UN and rotating president of the Security Council for April, introduced a German-made hourglass in Council meetings to keep speeches to five minutes each. The Russian ambassador asked in one instance that the timer be laid flat when he spoke. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
Secretary-General António Guterres holding a global town hall meeting with United Nations staff members, Jan. 17, 2019. The authors cite instances of tough resistance to Guterres’s systemwide gender parity strategy, including from certain staff unions. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO
