This Week @UN: The struggling women, peace & security agenda; Russia, echoing US, damns the EU; breaking the SecGen glass ceiling, big peacekeeping cuts.
Plus: Marking Oct. 7; Houthis kidnap more UN staff; Hamas-Israeli peace; Venezuela-US, World Food Program boss on sick leave.
• Thank you to the Pinkerton Foundation for its incredibly generous grant to PassBlue to ensure our further high-standard coverage of the UN. The foundation has donated to our cause of journalism for several years, and we remain ever-grateful for the financial boost, which always buoys our spirits. — PassBlue folks
Follow us on Blue Sky, Twitter (X), Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn
• Big peacekeeping cuts: UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced in a “contingency plan letter to staff members” on Oct. 10 that he has requested all nine peacekeeping missions (funded under the peacekeeping budget) to carry out a 15 percent reduction in expenditures in the current fiscal period, affecting all uniformed components, civilian personnel and operations. Additionally, the UN Support Office in Somalia, or UNSOM, will be required to make a 25 percent cut in expenses in the current fiscal year, or nine months in the remaining budget period.
Guterres said that except for the Somalia support office, “we will need to repatriate around 25 per cent of the uniformed personnel and their equipment in the coming months. Peacekeeping operations — together with the Department of Peace Operations and other relevant departments — have carefully identified the contingents and individual uniformed personnel that should be repatriated.” The total number of peacekeepers who may be cut is estimated by the UN to be 13,000 to 14,000.
He added: “Repatriating around 25 per cent of troops and police in the space of a few months will be a major and complex logistical exercise.”
The UN is contending with an overall liquidity crisis sourced to delayed, nonpayment or partial payments by member states as well as “significant uncertainty by payment of assessed contributions” by the US and other countries, a senior UN official said in a private media briefing this week. At the start of the peacekeeping budget cycle, on July 1, 2025, arrears totaled $2.1 billion, but payments may hit only about $880 million, further straining the liquidity crisis.
Earlier in the week, top UN officials met with US Ambassador Mike Waltz and US representative Dorothy Shea regarding the $1 billion dues the US normally pays to the UN peacekeeping budget at this time of year. The Americans told the UN that it will only commit to a $682 million payment, which can spent flexibly across nine peacekeeping missions, but $85 million is earmarked for a start-up UN Office in Haiti. UNMOGIP and UNTSO are funded through the UN regular budget and are not affected by the cuts. — DULCIE LEIMBACH
• Most popular on PassBlue: UNGA80 Special Report: Lavrov of Russia; Barbados, China, Niger, Germany, Burkina Faso, by Anton Ferreira
PassBlue this week:
• The WPS Agenda Needs Strong Wills to Counter Rough Headwinds, op-ed by Cristal Downing (see Oct. 6 item on the women, peace and security debate held in the UN Security Council)
• Russia Praises Trump but Heaps Scorn on Its EU Neighbors, by Damilola Banjo
• Madam SG: Can the UN Finally Smash Its Glass Ceiling?, by Arshi Qureshi
Monday, Oct. 6
• Spokesperson’s briefing: The UN Security Council held the annual open debate on women, peace and security, 25 years after Resolution 1325 was adopted, which Guterres said in the Council “gave voice to a simple truth, which is that women’s leadership is central to lasting peace.” Despite 100 countries adopting national action plans to carry out the WPS agenda, “too frequently, women remain absent from negotiating tables, sexual violence persists with impunity and women peacebuilders are underfunded, under threat, and under-recognized,” Guterres said. The head of UN Women, Sima Bahous, added that “[676] million women and girls live within reach of deadly conflict, the highest since the 1990s.” (Guterres’s latest report on progress of the Beijing Declaration.)
Tuesday, Oct. 7
• Spokesperson’s briefing: On the second anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, Guterres urged once again the immediate, unconditional release of the hostages who “remain captive in Gaza in deplorable conditions” and to end all “hostilities in Gaza, in Israel and the region right now.”
Wednesday, Oct. 8
• Spokesperson’s briefing: UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric reiterated the UN’s call for Yemen’s Houthis to “free all of our colleagues, as well as those from NGOs and diplomatic missions who have been detained arbitrarily” after an additional UN staff member was detained by Houthi rebels on Oct. 7 (and released the next day), bringing the number of staff held by the rebels to 53, some detained since 2021. Despite these dangers in Yemen, UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) continued this month to support the second round of the country’s polio vaccination campaign, which reached 1.3 million children during the first round in July.
Thursday, Oct. 9
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Guterres welcomed news of the ceasefire, hostage-release and prisoner-exchange agreement between Israel and Hamas regarding Gaza, brokered by US President Trump (and guarantor) with Qatar, Egypt and Türkiye, which the UN will support fully, and urged “all parties to fully abide by the terms of the agreement and to fully embrace the opportunities it presents.” Guterres also emphasized the need for “full, safe and sustained access for humanitarian workers; the removal of red tape and impediments; and the rebuilding of shattered infrastructure.”
[Update, Oct. 10: Within minutes of the announcement by Israel that the ceasefire had taken effect at noon, local time, “thousands of people resumed movement north, mainly on foot, but also in vehicles and animal-drawn carts,” Dujarric said. “Some of the people who have already managed to reach Gaza City reported that they arrived back to find their homes had sustained further damage.” Guterres sent a message of congratulations to Trump, passed through the US mission to the UN.]
The US 20-point peace plan includes a reference to the “entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip” to “proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party.”
As part of the first phase of the peace deal, Israeli authorities have reportedly cleared “170,000 metric tonnes of food, health and nutrition supplies, as well as shelter items, and other critical aid” stored in the region to be surged into Gaza, according to Dujarric, echoed by Tom Fletcher, UN emergency relief coordinator, in a follow-up briefing on Oct. 9. Ramiz Alakbarov, humanitarian chief for the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) and acting head of the UN Special Coordinator’s Office (UNSCO), based in Jerusalem, is meeting with Israeli officials on the clarity, volume and pace of the aid flows, including opening more crossings and access points.
Trump’s plan includes creating a “temporary” technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee consisting of “qualified Palestinians and international experts,” who will be supervised by a “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump, which will include former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and other unannounced “members and heads of state.” The board will “set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza” up to the “best international standards to create modern and efficient governance that serves the people of Gaza and is conducive to attracting investment,” until the Palestinian Authority completes its “reform programme” for the enclave.
Friday, Oct. 10
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Guterres congratulated Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado on being awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, calling her “a champion of democracy and a voice of unity in her country” and commended the Nobel Committee for “[reminding] us that the tools of democracy are the tools of peace.”
Separately, Ambassador Samuel Moncada of Venezuela to the UN called a meeting in the Security Council regarding the recent spate of deadly US attacks on vessels that it says, without proof, are carrying illegal drugs in international waters of the Caribbean and headed to the US. These actions plus a US military buildup off Venezuela’s coast, Moncada said, show that in the “very short-term an armed attack is to be perpetrated against Venezuela” and that “we’re here to avert the commission of an international crime.”
But John Kelley, US acting representative to the UN, defended the military strikes, saying President Trump was “on the offensive against drug cartels and drug trafficking into the United States” and will use the “full power of America” and the “full might of the United States” against the cartels. Trump, Kelley added, has designated them “terrorist organizations” and “determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.” Therefore, the US “is in a non-international armed conflict” in which Trump “has directed the Department of War to conduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict and consistent with Article 51 of the UN Charter.”
• Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Program, on leave after suffering a stroke; Carl Skau, her deputy, to handle daily operations
ICYMI:
• US: Stephen Schlesinger, the American historian, UN expert and PassBlue contributor, spoke about the UN’s status under Trump; International Rotary Club, Oct. 9.
• Surrogacy: Reem Alsalem, UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, on abolishing surrogacy
• UN Refugee Agency: The UN Conclave: Has Anything Changed in 25 Years?
• UN job losses: 5000 People Have Lost Their Jobs at the UN Refugee Agency
• UN mergers: Cost-Cutting Mergers Come Under Scrutiny
• Multilateralism trends: Seven Trends of a Multilateral System in Times of Great-Power Competition (report by Konrad Adenauer Foundation)
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on the Hamas-Israeli peace plan?
Related Posts
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.
![[Re]Group - A Playbook for Turbulent Times -Subscribe Now](https://passblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/regroup-v2_unf2026_square_600.500@2x.webp)
The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has abandoned the 67 000 people killed in Gaza and the more than 10 000 killed on the West Bank by Israel, the Nobel Peace Prize should have been awarded to Francesca Albanese, Medics and Journalists in Gaza!