While Secretary-General António Guterres held a virtual press briefing on June 25, his spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, above, moderated. Guterres spoke about the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Charter and the relentless devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. MANUEL ELIAS/UN PHOTO
Mary Robinson, chair of The Elders, an organization of eminent leaders, attending a youth world summit in London, 2019, with Manoly Sisavanh of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Laos. What do older statespeople and those ready to inherit the earth feel about the UN on its 75th birthday? That it has averted a third world war so far, but that it must also prevent another one: climate catastrophe. THE ELDERS
President Vladimir Putin delivering a speech at the first Russia-Africa summit, October 2019, in Sochi. In a new essay he wrote for the American magazine National Interest, Putin praises the original agreements among the big three powers who created the UN for keeping “confrontation under control.” JOE PENNEY
On June 17, 2020, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, left, the current president of the General Assembly, announced the results of numerous elections by webcast and to an empty Assembly Hall; Movses Abelian, a UN official, right. The UN celebrates its 75th birthday on June 26, 2020, marked by a declaration that envisions renewed “collective action,” the authors say, toward a more perfect world. EVAN SCHNEIDER/UN PHOTO
In France, the lockdown that began in mid-March in the pandemic was partly lifted two months later and is almost entirely over now. The French were depicted by the media, the author says, as undisciplined when compared with their European neighbors. Paris, above, in June. SIDONIE CHAUMETTE
Katalin Bogyay, the ambassador of Hungary to the UN, about to cast her secret ballots for the elections in the General Assembly Hall, June 17, 2020. The process required new procedures amid the pandemic, but it went well by all accounts. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
The Covid-19 pandemic’s effects on poor countries is hitting children hard, forcing some of them to work while navigating unsavory home lives. In wars, children’s status is worse than ever. Here, in Madagascar, the health system is strained and schools are closed. HENITSOA RAFALIA/WORLD BANK
Kelly Craft, the US envoy to the UN, arriving in the morning at the General Assembly Hall to cast her country’s secret ballot for various UN elections, June 17, 2020. By the afternoon, the new members of the Security Council were announced: India, Ireland, Mexico and Norway. The race between Djibouti and Kenya for the African seat goes to another round. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
Malcolm X was an American Muslim minister and iconic human-rights activist who was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965, at age 39, in New York City. In his work, he had tried to globalize the civil rights movement in the United States by bringing the cause to the United Nations. TASNIM NEWS AGENCY
In the 1960s, the African-American activist Malcolm X launched a lobbying campaign to “internationalize” the civil rights movement in the United States by calling on the United Nations to focus on the lives of black Americans through a human-rights lens.
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.
