This Week @UN: Ending Israel’s occupation; Syria’s new leader @UN; battle over next UN boss; UN can last without the US.
Plus: Childbirth in Gaza streets; Guterres on UNGA80; Colombia peace deal in action; UN envoy for Syria quits; Jimmy Kimmel.
• Our #1 story this week: Could the New US-India Critical Minerals Pact Fall Apart?
• “Truth in Media: Upholding the UN’s Founding Values in the Digital Age”: PassBlue’s staff reporter, Damilola Banjo, was a panelist in a Sept. 12 event produced by Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), with the permanent missions of Timor-Leste and Senegal. The panel took place at the Church Center for the United Nations, organized to observe the International Day of Peace.
New from PassBlue:
• What Can the UN General Assembly Do to End Israel’s Occupation?, op-ed by Mona Ali Khalil
• Syria’s New Leader to Speak at the UN, Pleading for Patience With His Country, by Mohamad Rimawi & Beril Eski
• The P-5 Tighten Their Grip Over Selection of the Next UN Boss, by Damilola Banjo
• The UN Can Survive Without the US, op-ed by Chris Lu; the essay got a shout-out at a Sept. 19 event, “The UN at a Crossroads: US Engagement and the Future of Multilateralism,” held by Columbia’s Institute of Global Politics
[Updated] US-UN Tracker: The UNGA80 high-level week starts Sept. 22, and President Trump’s schedule is still in flux, according to sources, but he is likely to arrive on Monday at 6:45 and leave New York City by Thursday, Sept. 25, after he speaks Tuesday morning in the General Assembly among other world leaders. (He meets with UN Secretary-General António Guterres that day and has a bilat with President Javier Milei of Argentina.) As an ex-US diplomat at the UN put it: Trump coming to UNGA is like a “homecoming” for a “prom queen.” He’s also expected to push his anti-immigration agenda at the UN forum, while showing little interest in the world body itself.
The UN ambassador-designate, Mike Waltz, was confirmed by the US Senate in time for UNGA80, although not as US representative to the General Assembly (which requires a separate vote). The deputy representative candidate, Tammy Bruce, has not gone through the Senate confirmation process yet, but she may be part of the UNGA80 team.
Overall, US participation is expected to leave a light footprint at the hullabaloo amid a time of great-power competition and diminishing UN influence. Side events so far: leaders’ reception hosted by Trump (Sept. 23, Lotte/Palace Hotel); restricting the global right to asylum; fireside chat: “Bringing the UN back to basics”; possible Israeli-Syrian meeting.
• #6: US-UN Counselor Morgan Ortagus cast the sole veto on Sept. 18 against a Security Council draft resolution focusing on alleviating famine in Gaza. The vote puts the total number of US vetoes on draft resolutions on Gaza (since Oct. 7, 2023) to six. Ortagus, an ex-deputy special envoy to the Mideast, said the text “fails to condemn Hamas or recognize Israel’s right to defend itself and it wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this Council.” Yet, the General Assembly last week condemned Hamas, and some diplomats say that the US would have vetoed the Sept. 18 text even if it had condemned the militia.
• Two new political appointees join the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs (which works closely with the US mission to the UN): Micah Ketchel and Michael Drager.
• Take our UNGA80 quiz! Our survey results show that the question on Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley of Barbados is the hardest. Can you ace it?
• Delighted? Guterres declared in a Sept. 16 press conference that he would be “delighted to receive Prime Minister Netanyahu” during the upcoming high-level week of the UN General Assembly (starting Sept. 22). While Guterres may be obliged to meet the prime minister of Israel, it is shocking to the conscience that he would be “delighted” to do so.
First, as Guterres acknowledged, Netanyahu is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. Although “the gravity of the situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories” may, as he said, justify the UN secretary-general granting the Israeli prime minister a meeting, it does not justify expressing pleasure in doing so. Second, Israel is currently in the International Court of Justice dock for what the court has deemed a plausible genocide against the Palestinian people – an actual genocide, according to the UN Commission’s report released on Sept. 15.
Third, Israel’s armed forces have killed 300 UNRWA staff and hundreds of their children; detained and reportedly tortured dozens of UNRWA staff; and destroyed or damaged 300 UNRWA installations. Fourth, Netanyahu leads an extremist government seemingly bent on annexing the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in contravention of several UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions; the aptly named “serial killer of peace” has openly boasted about blocking the Council’s vision of a two-state solution.
Fifth, in this year alone and in addition to his crimes against Palestine and Palestinians, Netanyahu has recently been attacking so many UN member states that they must be listed alphabetically: Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria and Yemen; he may have also sent the drones that attacked the Freedom Flotilla in Tunisia a few days ago. Sixth, Netanyahu’s government had declared Guterres persona non grata and barred him from entering Israel. So how can the secretary-general meet such horrors with such delight? — Opinion by MONA ALI KHALIL
UN news:
Monday, Sept. 15
• Spokesperson’s briefing: The UN “condemned” Israel’s “deadly escalation” of its takeover of Gaza City, which killed at least 53 people over the weekend and targeted at least 10 UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) buildings, including seven schools and two clinics used as shelters for thousands of people. Israel’s stepped-up offensive has forced at least 70,000 people southward toward the cities of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis via the extremely congested Al Rashid Road, the only route available to the south.
[Update]: The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) says Israel’s offensive is forcing women to give birth in the streets, without hospitals, doctors or clean water. Israeli authorities have also classified some food items, like peanut butter, as “luxuries” that are not being allowed in. People are arriving in the south deep into the night, many of them walking for long hours without food, water and shelter, according to Stéphane Dujarric, UN spokesperson.
Tuesday, Sept. 16
• Guterres held a press briefing before the high-level week of UNGA80, saying that he would “press” the 150 world leaders attending to “contact each other, to speak directly with each other. To bridge divides. To reduce risks. To find solutions.” He fielded questions from media. Highlights:
- Gaza: Guterres said that “it is not in the attributions of the Secretary-General to do the legal determination of genocide,” despite a UN Commission of Inquiry concluding that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, but rather that “judicial entities” such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) must make that determination. Guterres said any effort to send a UN force to protect civilians in Gaza “will be rejected by Israel and then, I believe, rejected by also the United States” without an immediate ceasefire. He called on the international community to “make sure that the two-state solution prevails,” asking rhetorically: “What is the alternative? It’s a one state in which one people is deprived of basic rights, one state in which people [are] moved out of their land. Is this possible in the 21st century?”
- US: Guterres said he would also “be delighted” to meet and collaborate with US President Trump, saying the UN could offer its peace mediation expertise, and the UN, in exchange, could use the US’ “carrots and sticks” and that “if you are able to combine the two, I think we can have a very effective way to make sure that some peace processes at least can lead to a successful result.”
- Guterres will meet with both the Russian and Ukrainian delegations, as well as Sudan’s, and mediate another round of talks with the two sides of Cyprus, Turkey and Greece.
Wednesday, Sept. 17
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Guterres “welcomed” news of the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace’s first sentences, against former FARC-EP commanders, calling the move a “key step forward for the innovative mechanisms of transitional justice” toward executing the 2016 peace agreement. The UN’s political mission in Colombia is mandated to verify implementation of the pact.
• Roza Otunbayeva, the special representative of the UN and head of the mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told the Security Council by teleconference that this was her last briefing as she is leaving. Dujarric: “She said that she has spent the past three years advocating for engagement with the de facto authorities based on the mandate given to us by the Security Council, stressing that the development of Afghanistan’s full potential is required for the country to address the multiple and simultaneous crises that it is facing.”
Thursday, Sept. 18
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Geir Pedersen, UN special envoy to Syria, has resigned for “personal reasons” after six and a half years of service. Pedersen, a Norwegian, said it had been “both his duty and a privilege” to help “guide the United Nations’ political efforts in the first crucial months of Syria’s period of political transition” away from Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Friday, Sept. 19
• Spokesperson’s briefing: After the US comedy show host Jimmy Kimmel was fired on Sept. 17 by ABC, apparently for his comments on the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, Dujarric was asked whether US media voices being “silenced under political pressure” and the “erosion of freedom of expression in established democracy” threaten the UN’s mandate to defend human rights globally. “I think every country in the world, including what you would refer to as established democracies, can always do better in terms of human rights, and we will continue to push in that direction,” he said.
• UN Security Council voted against a Korea-led draft text to repeal previous UN resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran to curtail its nuclear weapons development (most recently, Resolution 2231, endorsing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, which President Trump withdrew from in 2018). Today’s vote triggers UN sanctions under the JCPOA’s snapback within a week, unless Iran agrees to further negotiate with the nuclear deal’s remaining parties: Germany, France, Britain, China and Russia.
ICYMI:
• UN80 Restructuring: Guterres sent member states a new report linked to the UN80 reform regarding major structural changes and realignments.
• UNGA80: Global Governance Innovation Network’s “UNGA @80 Spotlight”
• Gaza/US: Tony Blair’s US-Backed Proposal for Ending the Gaza War and Replacing Hamas
• Israel: Has Killed Nearly 3,000 Aid Seekers
• Gaza: The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the OPT and Israel, finds Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
• UN80 Reform: Revised estimates for the program budget 2026 and support account for peacekeeping 2025/26
This article was updated to include changes to President Trump’s UNGA schedule.
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on the US relationship to the UN?
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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.
