Ambassador Zhang Jun of China, presiding over the UN Security Council, March 12, 2020, days before the Council began meeting strictly online because of the coronavirus pandemic. Diplomats have expressed concern and frustration over the sudden lack of transparency by the Council in migrating its meetings to virtual formats. MANUEL ELIAS/UN PHOTO
Reports of domestic violence are rising as Covid-19 races across the planet and people are ordered to stay home. But as UN Secretary-General Guterres said on April 5: “For many women and girls, the threat looms largest where they should be safest. In their homes.” Like many countries, Spain, above, is in lockdown mode. JOHN PENNEY
Kelly Craft, speaking to reporters outside the UN Security Council, Jan. 6, 2020. The US ambassador to the UN appeared on Fox News on March 29 but refused to take the bait from a network correspondent and blame China for the pandemic. USUN
President Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo love to label Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus.”
UN Women’s executive director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ncguka, speaking at the Commission on the Status of Women’s annual meeting in March 2020, at UN headquarters. The conference had been cut to a single day from 11, as the Covid-19 virus began racing from China to the rest of the world. Now, the Generation Equality Forum is postponed until 2021. RYAN BROWN/UN WOMEN
UN Women is postponing two long-planned international meetings designed to give civil society groups a leading role in advancing gender rights 25 years after a landmark 1995 Beijing conference on women.
José Singer Weisinger, the special envoy of the Dominican Republic to the United Nations, in the Security Council, Sept. 18, 2019, with members of his delegation. His country assumes the presidency in April, after a tumultuous month in which the Council suddenly switched to privately held meetings online amid the coronavirus pandemic. ARIANA LINDQUIST/UN PHOTO
New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo providing a coronavirus update at the capital, in Albany, March 31, 2020. Right now, the state has the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the United States, with 76,049 as of April 1. The country is currently No. 1 globally for the most confirmed cases, 190,740. MIKE GROLL/OFFICE OF GOVERNOR ANDREW M. CUOMO
UN headquarters in New York, during the opening of the General Assembly’s annual debate, above, September 2019. The Generation Equality Forum scheduled for May in Mexico City, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Beijing conference on women’s rights, is likely to be postponed or cancelled. AMANDA VOISARD/UN PHOTO
Another highlight of the year marking the 25th anniversary of a breakthrough international conference in Beijing on women’s rights has fallen victim to the global march of the new coronavirus, Covid-19.
The UN Security Council’s 15 members held a meeting on March 26, 2020, by videoconference, to discuss the UN political mission in Libya, as the UN headquarters in New York City remains physically off-limits amid the Covid-19 outbreak. But the meetings have not been live-streamed, so other UN member states are raising questions about the growing lack of transparency of the Council.
