Welcome to This Week @UN: Rwanda’s chaos in Goma; UNDP cat in West Africa; China heads Security Council; young diplomats support the UN. Plus: Congo; Haiti; Gaza; AI; Trump’s trampling.
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• Dept. of Outrage (DOO): Argentina plans to take its law against the deliberate killing of a woman, or femicide, off the books. In 2023, the country recorded 250 such cases. UN Women reports that countries with laws to stop domestic violence have lower rates of intimate partner violence (9.5 percent compared with 16.1 percent). We asked a UN Women spokesperson for a response but she couldn’t meet our deadline to reply.
• The term of the high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, ends in December 2025. Grandi, an Italian, has served in this role since 2016. Christine Schraner Burgener, a Swiss, has thrown her chapeau into the ring. She is a former UN special envoy for Myanmar. Niels Annen, a German politician, is reportedly vying for the post, too. He met with UN Secretary-General António Guterres this week at New York City headquarters. Given the current demands US President Donald Trump is placing on the UN overall, the commissioner job may be more competitive than normal. The US is now the leading donor to the UN Refugee Agency.
• Update: Al-Mezan Center, a Palestinian nongovernmental organization in Gaza, tweeted on Feb. 7 that Israeli officials have agreed to allow Palestinian Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza and detained without charges by Israel since Dec. 27, 2024, to let him meet with his lawyers. PassBlue confirmed last month that Dr. Safiyeh’s mother, Samiha Abu Safia, died of a heart attack in Gaza on Jan. 7, soon after her son was arrested by Israel.
From PassBlue this week:
• Goma, Congo: Understanding the M23 and RDF Attack, opinion by Jason Stearns
• Claws Out in UNDP Office in West Africa, by Anton Ferreira
• China Heads the Security Council as US Takes the Offensive, by Damilola Banjo
• Young Diplomats: Don’t Abandon the UN, by Damilola Banjo
Top UN news:
Monday, Feb. 3
• Spokesperson’s briefing: About one week after the siege of Goma, the capital of eastern Congo, bodies are still littering the streets, with UN officials there reporting that the morgues are full and that hospitals and health centers are overwhelmed with treating people. After the Rwandan-backed paramilitary group M23 announced a ceasefire in the last few days, the militia is consolidating its presence in Goma, according to UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, who said that the M23 are reportedly searching and occupying homes, looting and seizing vehicles, including those owned by humanitarian organizations, violating international law.
A summit of the East African Community/Southern African Development Community is being held today and tomorrow in Tanzania regarding the assault in Congo. On Feb. 7, Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said his team in the Congo is verifying allegations of rape, gang rape and sexual slavery throughout the conflict zones. The Human Rights Council is also establishing a fact-finding mission by the UN Human Rights Office and an independent Commission of Inquiry on the Congo. Both will examine violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law committed in North and South Kivu Provinces since January 2022.
• Latest US actions: Dujarric said the UN is “concerned” about the potential impact of growing trade restrictions amid a currently “low-growth” global economy as well as effects on developing countries and vulnerable populations, after Trump issued new tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, the latter two which he quickly paused for negotiations. Dujarric noted that “most global trade continues to follow internationally agreed to rules by the World Trade Organization (WTO).” (See PassBlue’s story on China’s response to the tariffs.)
• The UN spokesperson also said that Trump’s gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which contributes to the $14 billion (47 percent) of US donations to the global humanitarian appeal, is “having immediate impact on lifesaving activities.” Dujarric reiterated that Trump and Guterres had no plans to talk yet.
• Lieut. Gen. Ulisses De Mesquita Gomes of Brazil, Monusco’s new force commander, arrives in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, on Feb. 8. He is bringing three Brazilian peacekeepers with him to augment the mission’s 19 other Brazilians.
Tuesday, Feb. 4
• Spokesperson’s briefing: A new report from the UN mission in Haiti (BINUH) found that 5,626 people were killed and over 2,200 people injured in 2024, including at least 1,732 people were killed and over 400 people injured from gang violence, self-defense groups or police operations from October to the end of December. Dujarric noted the gangs’ recruitment of children, control over free movement in the capital of Port-au-Prince and continued rape and sexual exploitation of women and girls. In December alone, more than 630 such incidents were recorded, a 38 percent increase compared with the total recorded in October and November. Almost two-thirds of cases are reported to have been perpetrated by armed groups. Unicef reports a staggering 1,000 percent leap in sexual violence against children between 2023 and last year. Meanwhile, BINUH reports “timid steps” taken by authorities to “combat impunity.”
• Relatedly, Dujarric said the US submitted an official notification for an immediate stop-work order on its contribution to the Kenyan-led and UN-endorsed Multinational Security Support Force in Haiti, freezing $13.3 million of the $15 million donated by the US to the initiative’s trust fund.
• Additionally, Trump signed two executive orders: one for the US to withdraw from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, which he did in his first term. (The Biden administration rejoined it.) Although the US is not a current member of the 47-party Council, it will end participation in it. The order specifies that the proportion of the US assessment in the 2025 UN regular budget toward the Council will be withheld.
• The second Trump order bans funding to the UN refugee agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, but the US Congress froze all funds to the entity early last year, responding to allegations that some UNRWA staffers took part in the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, so the new edict is mostly symbolic.
• The White House also singled out Paris-based Unesco for a 90-day review by the US ambassador to the UN (Elise Stefanik), focusing on “any anti-Semitism or anti-Israel sentiment within the organization.”
Wednesday, Feb. 5
• Spokesperson’s briefing: An estimated 500,000 people have returned from southern and central to Gaza’s north, UN humanitarians report, amid the ceasefire, while aid operations scale up across the enclave. Deliveries include 22 truckloads of tents in the north, “but we need more,” Dujarric said. Trump’s plan for the US “to take over” the Gaza Strip, forcing the illegal displacement of Gazans or blocking them from returning to their homeland, Dujarric also said, is “tantamount to ethnic cleansing.” He pointed to Guterres’s speech in a meeting of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People on Feb. 5, in which he called for “solutions” that “stay true to the bedrock of international law. It is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing.”
• Bjorg Sandkjær of Norway is named assistant secretary-general for policy coordination in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, succeeding Maria-Francesca Spatolisano of Italy.
Thursday, Feb. 6
• Spokesperson’s briefing: On this year’s International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Guterres said in a statement that despite progress in eradicating the practice, “we must pick up the pace” and “strengthen global movements to break down harmful attitudes, beliefs and gender stereotypes” to “bolster strong partnerships between governments, grassroots organizations and survivors.” Today, over 230 million girls and women are survivors of FGM.
• The UN deputy spokesperson, Farhan Haq, highlighted the “need to support the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC)” after the US (Trump) signed an executive order imposing sanctions on The Hague-based court. Haq elaborated on Feb. 7, saying: “International criminal law is an essential element to fighting impunity, which is unfortunately widespread in today’s world. The International Criminal Court is its essential element, and it must be allowed to work in full independence.”
Haq also told reporters that “any restrictions taken against individuals would be implemented consistently with the host country’s obligations under the UN Headquarters Agreement. Obviously, the Headquarters Agreement entails certain obligations on the host country, and we expect them to follow through on those.”
A joint statement from 79 states parties supporting the ICC.
• As to the effect of Trump’s closing of USAID on UN programs, Haq said the organization was “studying what this means in terms of delayed payments” and verifying if there is enough money for continuing UN agencies’ work. The World Food Program, which is led by Cindy McCain, an American, was ordered by Washington to stop dozens of US-financed programs.
• Media reports say that Elon Musk, head of the US Department of Government Efficiency, entered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and erased some data on world weather; Haq said that data are “important in terms of making measurements about climatic conditions.”
Friday, Feb. 7
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Guterres is attending the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris next week to tell world leaders that the “growing concentration of AI capabilities in the hands of a few companies and countries risks widening global inequalities and deepening geo-political divides.”
• Trump said he would sign a decree “ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws,” surely pleasing the petroleum industry, which is pro-plastics. Haq of the UN said its headquarters, which bans plastic utensils in its cafeterias and cafes, “We had reasons for environmental sustainability to change all the implements that had been plastic to either paper or to wood, and we’re sticking with the reasoning behind that.”
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on Trump's effects on the UN and multilateralism?
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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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