The Women’s Day march in Istanbul, 2017. The leaders of Brazil, Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, all friends of Trump, have been steadily eroding the rights of women. In Turkey, for example, a bill has been introduced to grant amnesty to men convicted of statutory rape if they marry their victims. OZGE SEBZECI/CREATIVE COMMONS
The annual Commission on the Status of Women, 2019. This year’s meeting, March 9-20, could be as contentious on such sensitive topics as reproductive health rights as they were last year. This time, however, the session reviews the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the global blueprint for empowering women. Serious gaps remain on gender equality. RYAN BROWN/UN WOMEN
Jonathan Moore, the new head of International Organization Affairs, a US State Department bureau that works closely with the US mission to the UN.
The naming of Jonathan Moore, a senior United States Foreign Service officer, to the position of Acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, signals that in the United Nations’ 75th year, the Trump administration is getting serious.
Fannie Munlin, the chair of the NGO Executive Committee, the liaison between the civil society world and the UN. She manages the needs and demands of 1,600 nongovernmental organizations, including their egos. It seems to come easily to her. DULCIE LEIMBACH
A detail from a mural being painted on a memorial for victims of Guatemala’s civil war, San Juan Comalapa, 2018. As UN-led global commemorations push ahead on women’s rights and equality in 2020, a set of six “action coalition” themes was announced by UN Women. Not everyone is happy with the topics. RYAN BROWN/UN WOMEN
In 2017, a contingent of UN peacekeepers in Haiti holding a closing ceremony to their operations and the start of peacekeepers’ overall withdrawal from the country that year. New research focusing on how sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers in Haiti has affected women and girls there has revealed a nuanced situation linked to extreme, pervasive poverty. LOGAN ABASSI/UN PHOTO
This year, the status of women on many fronts, from political involvement to personal justice, will be evaluated in international forums. It is widely recognized, for starters, that women in poor countries need more access to information on basic health care for themselves and their families. Here, polio vaccination in Afghanistan. CREATIVE COMMONS
Secretary-General António Guterres arriving at the Security Council meeting on upholding the United Nations Charter, Jan. 9, 2020. The debate was scheduled long before the recent US-Iran attacks, but those alarming actions were referred to directly or alluded to by member states as discouragement prevailed. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO
President Trump speaking at the UN’s luncheon for heads of state, September 2019. He and other certain global leaders attending the General Assembly opening session signaled the rise of nationalism coupled with pushback on women’s rights. LIZ MUZI/UNCA POOL
A street scene in Kabul, taken by the author, who is originally from Boston but worked for many years in Afghanistan. A Christmas she spent in the capital one year, she writes, was the most touching and surprising she had ever experienced.
The Christmas spirit finally found me drinking whisky on a rooftop in Kabul.
