US-UN Relations

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 Covid-19 pandemic, United Nations health agencies must now face the possible abdication of the United States’ leading role in fighting polio — just as the world gets tantalizingly close to eradicating it for good.

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 Alabama in 1965. YUTAKA NAGATA/UN PHOTO

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. ADAM SCHULTZ/BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT

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 International Atomic Energy Agency issued an alarming report on June 5, voicing “serious concern” over Iran’s refusal to allow the agency’s inspectors to investigate two sites where the country is suspected of having conducted undeclared nuclear activities in the past.

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

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

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 collateral damage during the pandemic. 

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 

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 bound and determined to extend a tight global arms embargo on Iran, but it still can’t send a straight message about how it will do so through the United Nations Security Council. The embargo, embedded in a Council resolution endorsing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, expires in October.

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