Vice President Pence suddenly showed up at the UN on April 10, 2019, to demand that the Security Council strip the current Venezuelan ambassador’s UN credentials. That has not happened. The US mission to the UN lacks a permanent representative amid an outflow of a range of personnel. Some UN diplomats say, “There is no one left.” MANUEL ELIAS/UN PHOTO
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
Drought results in Mauritania, the Sahel region of West Africa, 2012. More evidence is showing that extreme weather and slower forms of climate change can produce more risks of conflict and other violence, a fact clear in such parts of the world as the Sahel. CREATIVE COMMONS
Demonstrators in Berlin protesting the war in Syria. A new attribution team at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is ready to work on determining who is to blame for the 2018 chemical attacks in Syria, despite angry objections by Russia. CREATIVE COMMONS
Dian Triansyah Djani, Indonesia’s ambassador to the UN, wearing a traditional batik shirt from his country. He said the main desire of his country as an elected member of the UN Security Council is simple: to save as many lives as possible while trying to make peacekeeping as highly efficient as possible.
Well, as I predicted about ten years ago, Germany is now pushing for a restructuring of the UN security council, and wants a permanent […]
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Amal Clooney, the British human-rights lawyer, told the Security Council that now is its “Nuremberg moment” to push for prosecuting cases of sexual violence in conflict. Nadia Murad, right, a Yazidi, had been held by ISIS in Iraq. In 2018, Murad won the Nobel Peace Prize with Dr. Denis Mukwege, a Congolese, for their work to end sexual atrocities.
In a refugee camp in South Sudan, people escape the fighting in the country’s civil war, including rampant rape by militias and national armed forces. Members of the UN Security Council are drafting a resolution to strengthen such victims’ rights, but the United States is refusing language on sexual and reproductive health services. GEOFF PUGH
President Trump with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, May 2017. From the start of his presidency, Trump’s Middle East policies have amounted to a “bromance” with the Israeli leader, the author writes, but where is the mysterious peace plan for Israel and Palestine, and who will gain from it the most?
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s not really “America First.”
It’s “Donald Trump First.”
Carlos Holmes Trujillo, left, Colombia’s foreign affairs minister, with Jonathan R. Cohen, center, deputy ambassador of the US to the UN, and Karel van Oosterom, Netherlands’ ambassador to the UN, in the Security Council, Oct. 10, 2018. Cohen has been nominated by Trump as ambassador to Egypt, which could leave the US mission to the UN desperately short of ambassadors. RICK BAJORNAS/UN PHOTO
