Welcome to This Week @UN: Africa in the Security Council; Azerbaijan’s ‘COP of Peace’; fixing Haiti’s food and water crises; Elise Stefanik. Plus: Trump; COP29; UNRWA; Guterres on genocide in Gaza; Sudan.
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• Our #1 story of the month & week: Iraq’s Parliament May Allow Girls as Young as 9 Years Old to Marry, by Nadia Asaad
• Damilola Banjo, our staff reporter, talked to a class of graduate students studying human rights at Columbia University this week, where she described her process of interviewing diplomats by asking them follow-up questions to their prepared remarks, nudging them to go off script.
• Dulcie Leimbach, PassBlue’s editor, spoke to “young leaders” about gender equality at the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung’s Fall Academy this week. Progress, she told them, looked especially challenging in the current geopolitical climate but that should give them more determination to achieving equal rights.
• We mourn the death of Felice Gaer, an American human rights advocate who circulated in that global arena for decades, impressing everyone with her encyclopedic knowledge of international law. She was an invaluable resource for PassBlue, and we will miss her dearly.
• Stephen Schlesinger, the US historian, UN expert and a PassBlue advisory board member, is speaking at UN headquarters on Nov. 21, 5 PM on the 40th anniversary of the United Nations Staff 1% for Development Fund. For more information: PLduffy@gmail.com
From PassBlue this week:
• Which 2 African States Should Get a Permanent Seat in the Security Council: Our Survey Results, by Anton Ferreira
• Azerbaijan’s ‘COP of Peace’ Is a Facade, Experts Say, by Michelle Langrand
• Hi-Tech Fixes Can End Haiti’s Plague of Water Scarcity and Food Insecurity, op-ed by Amaj Rahimi-Midani
• The UN Footprints of Elise Stefanik, by Damilola Banjo
Top UN news:
Monday, Nov. 11
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Asked about US President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of Elise Stefanik, who criticized Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, as UN ambassador, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said it’s “not on us to react” to Trump’s choice, and the UN will “will work constructively with the Permanent Representative of the United States just like we do with every other country.” He added that he “will leave the interpretation of smoke signals” to journalists on whether Stefanik’s appointment represented a “good signal” in the organization’s pursuit of urgent climate action. [UPDATE, Nov. 12: Dujarric said that UN Secretary-General António Guterres had not yet spoken with Trump or Stefanik]
Tuesday, Nov. 12
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Speaking at the opening of the COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Guterres said that “doubling down on fossil fuels is absurd” and called climate justice a “story of avoidable injustice,” considering that the world’s richest billionaires emit more carbon in 90 minutes than the average person does in a lifetime. Guterres listed three priorities for climate action: “emergency emissions reductions, protecting people from the ravages of the climate crisis, and delivering on climate finance.” He emphasized that the “clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business, and no government can stop it.”
Wednesday, Nov. 13
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee that the agency has been a victim of a “fierce, global disinformation campaign” by both the Israeli government and “affiliated groups,” who, he says, tell “parliaments and governments in top donor countries” that the agency is “colluding with or infiltrated by Hamas.” In response, Lazzarini continues to insist, as he has for nearly a year, that UNRWA “takes allegations of neutrality breaches extremely seriously.” He added: “While we do not operate in a zero-risk environment [in Gaza], we take a zero-tolerance approach to any proven breaches.”
Reiterating requests he made last week to the General Assembly, Lazzarini asked member states to, first, “prevent the implementation of [Israel’s recent] legislation against UNRWA”; second, “ensure that any plan for a political transition delineates UNRWA’s role” so it can “conclude its mandate . . . and, in the occupied Palestinian territory, hand over its services to an empowered Palestinian administration”; and “that Member States maintain funding to UNRWA, and do not withhold or divert funds on the assumption that the Agency can no longer operate.”
Separately, when asked by reporters whether claims by the Israeli ambassador, Danny Danon, that his country has spoken to the UN about other UN agencies replacing UNRWA, Dujarric said the UN’s position is “unchanged” regarding Israel’s agenda: They “continue to say what they continue to say. We continue to say no, that there is no alternative to the vast work that UNRWA does in education, in health care, in humanitarian.”
• Maj. Gen. Ramón Guardado Sánchez of Mexico is the new head of mission and chief military observer for the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan, a k a UNMOGIP. He succeeds Rear Adm. Guillermo Ríos of Argentina.
Thursday, Nov. 14
• Spokesperson’s briefing: After a UN human rights committee found on Nov. 14 that Israel’s military operations in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide,” Dujarric said that it “continues to be [Guterres’s] belief” that it’s not his role to label something a genocide and that “the labelling of an action as genocide has to come from a judicial authority.” He cited the past genocides in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda as examples. Dujarric added that it “doesn’t stop” Guterres and his representatives most lately — Joyce Msuya [acting head of Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)] — from “speaking in very clear and vivid terms about what we think is going on on the ground.”
Additionally, a reporter asked Dujarric if Guterres is considering closing his X/Twitter account, as some news organizations have done, like The Guardian, and opening accounts on alternative platforms? Reply: “At this point, no. We feel that we need to be on as many platforms as possible, but obviously we take a look at the environment regularly and make decisions accordingly.”
Friday, Nov. 15
• Spokesperson’s briefing: OCHA warns that armed violence in Sudan’s Aj Jazirah State, near the capital of Khartoum, is “putting the lives of tens of thousands of people at risk” with escalating clashes displacing more than 343,000 people across the region in less than a month, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). OCHA assessed last week that many of the displaced people had “walked for days and arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs,” with more vulnerable groups sheltering in the open with people who are sick.
• A French peacekeeper for UNIFIL was killed and three others were lightly injured in an accident on a coastal road near the village of Shama. The convoy was heading back to headquarters in Naqoura, Lebanon.
ICYMI:
• The General Assembly adopted a resolution to intensify work on preventing violence against women and girls in the digital arena. Argentina was the only country to vote against it, below.
• Relatedly, a new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue on how hate and harassment toward women intensified online after the recent US election
Arthur Bassas is a researcher and writer who graduated from St. Andrews in Scotland, majoring in international relations and terrorism. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and speaks English and French.
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