The Security Council began meeting in its chamber this month, complete with plastic dividers, for the first time since the pandemic started: Nicolas de Rivière, France’s ambassador, left, and Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s envoy, right, Oct. 15, 2020. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada speaking remotely at the UN’s event on financing the Sustainable Development Goals amid Covid-19. Secretary-General António Guterres, right, Sept. 29, 2020. The authors of this essay say that to build the post-pandemic planet, nations and people must understand the need for solidarity and humility to master the challenges ahead. ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
The world order is no more.
In Bamako, Mali, women waiting to have their babies vaccinated. Jane Roberts, a Californian who personally helped fund-raise millions of dollars for the UN Population Fund, traveled to Mali and elsewhere in West Africa to understand women’s needs better in the region. UNFPA
In the rubble of what’s left of American commitments to international organizations, one survivor is doing well. The United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, the perennial target of Republican politicians and presidents since the 1980s, is thriving.
Sweden’s steps to cope with the coronavirus have aroused both global curiosity and condemnation, but it has been a set of “peculiar circumstances” that have shaped the country’s response, the writer explains. Here, a recent scene at Lake Kottla, Stockholm. KJELL ENGELBREKT
Prime Minister Boris Johnson holding a Covid-19 press briefing, London, June 16, 2020. Britain currently has the highest death rate from the virus in Europe, and the writer says that navigating the mishmash of lockdown rules in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has been “greatly frustrating and confusing.” PIPPA FOWLES/NO. 10 DOWNING STREET
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
Dr. Jillann Farmer, the UN medical director for more than seven years, has returned to Australia to work for the Department of Health in Queensland. She led the UN’s internal health care system through such crises as the Ebola outbreak in 2014, but the coronavirus pandemic required the UN’s biggest medical-emergency response yet when it hit New York City in March.
A photo taken recently from the author’s balcony, in Cornet Chahwan, Lebanon, with Beirut in the distance. He writes that being quarantined at home means he can “finally breathe fresh air” as the sky is no longer tainted by the nitrogen-dioxide inversion on the horizon. Yet the country is bracing for chaos. BEIRUT — In these dire times of the Covid-19 crisis, I am quarantined at home in the hills overlooking Beirut and the Mediterranean. I take comfort in the prospects of clear, clean skies, no longer tainted by the brown nitrogen-dioxide inversion on the horizon.
The Chamberí District, Madrid, April 27, 2020. The author, a former Argentine foreign minister who is living and working in Madrid, notes the “solitude” of the city at the end of the day, but says that the country has been responding to the pandemic with “solidarity.” SUSANA MALCORRA
Chinatown in Singapore. March 19, 2020. The city-state, the author says, is known for its world-class health system, but in its strong response to the coronavirus pandemic, it had overlooked a crucial segment of society that enables its prosperity: migrants. ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
