This Week @UN: The next secretary-general?; Sierra Leone toughens up; Syrian leader’s relief; feminist foreign policies suffering; US shakes up the Security Council.
Plus: Gaza improvements; trapped & burned in Sudan; Hurricane Melissa; Brazil’s COP30; killing children in the West Bank.
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• Our #1 story this week: US Wants UN Salaries Cut, but D.C. Is Singing to the Wrong Choir, by Damilola Banjo
• Our annual participation in the wonderful NewsMatch campaign has begun, and we’re off to a raring start with many donations. We thank the Van Lang Charitable Fund for an especially generous gift. It made our day! But we still need more donations, and you can make that happen. We provide news and information about the UN and related global affairs, always aiming — no matter how challenging, no matter who tells us to change our “tone” — to hold powerful people and countries to account. “We the peoples” is a guiding light in our truth-telling work. As always, our deep thanks to you, dear readers. — The PassBlue team
• We asked Farhan Haq, deputy UN spokesperson, if Secretary-General António Guterres has a comment on the election on Tuesday of Zohran Mamdani as the new mayor of New York City, the host for UN headquarters, and whether Guterres would invite him to the compound soon. Haq said in an email: “The Secretary-General looks forward to working with the new mayor once he is in office. As for any meeting, I think that will have to wait until he takes office at the start of next year” — Jan. 1.
PassBlue this week:
• Results of PassBlue’s Survey: ‘Vote for the Next UN Secretary-General’, by PassBlue. Michelle Bachelet, ex-two-time president of Chile, won the informal readers’ poll. The results were reported heavily in Santiago’s media, such as El Ciudadano (The Citizen), and elsewhere.
• Small Nation, Big Dreams: Sierra Leone Learns Tough Lessons in the Security Council, by Damilola Banjo
• US Pushes to Lift UN Sanctions Against Syria’s Leader ASAP, by Damilola Banjo
• Feminist Foreign Policies Are Fighting for Their Life, by Maria Luisa Gambale
• From Gaza to Syria, US Makes New Moves in the UN Security Council, by Damilola Banjo
Monday, Nov. 3
• Spokesperson’s briefing: The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said UN teams have collected 200 truckloads carrying nearly 1,900 metric tons of food into Gaza, as well as shelter equipment, hygiene supplies and “dignity kits” containing menstrual health and midwifery supplies from Israeli crossings around the Strip. The UN is also supporting 17 bakeries and backing the reopening of five temporary learning centers while renovating four schools. The increase of aid since the truce between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 11 in Gaza is “having a positive impact” on people there, OCHA said, but it’s not enough. Simultaneously, a new UN Satellite Center (UNSAT) assessment found that 123,000 structures were “destroyed,” and “some 81 percent of all structures in the Gaza Strip are damaged.” The enclave saw the largest increases in damage since July 2025, affecting nearly 5,700 structures.
The World Food Program’s detailed updates paint a clear picture of the continuing hurdles of getting aid to Gazans.
Updates:
• Truce violations: OCHA said detonations of residential buildings by the Israeli military, especially in eastern Khan Younis, Gaza City and Rafah, have been reported daily, with more strikes near or east of the so-called “Yellow Line,” resulting in casualties in the Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, and Khan Younis governorates.
• Shots: A catch-up campaign for routine immunization, nutrition and growth monitoring is targeting 44,000 children, led by UN agencies with partners and the Gaza Ministry of Health.
• Food & shelter: Across the enclave, the number of daily meals being served by 183 community kitchens topped 1.2 million meals on Nov. 3, per UN, an increase of more than 80 percent compared with late September, before the truce went into effect. Entry of aid and commercial goods continues to be limited to two crossings, with no direct access from Israel to northern Gaza or from Egypt to southern Gaza. Most displaced people remain in overcrowded makeshift sites.
Tuesday, Nov. 4
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Guterres “once again called for an immediate cessation of hostilities” in Sudan, after the Famine Review Committee (FRC) said “famine conditions” are occurring in the North Darfur region of El Fasher and Kadugli, South Kordofan, where fighting between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has cut off commercial supplies and humanitarian aid. Yet, OCHA reports that it continues to deliver assistance “wherever access permits,” notably in Tawila, a refugee camp hosting hundreds of thousands of people and now accommodating an influx of people fleeing El Fasher since the RSF’s full siege on Oct. 28. Tens of thousands of civilians who escaped the North Darfur capital last week are considered missing.
Updates:
• The UAE-backed RSF have shut down one of the last remaining escape routes out of El Fasher and appear to be burning bodies at several sites across the city, according to a new report. At the same time, the RSF announced on Nov. 6 that it agreed to a humanitarian truce proposed by US-led mediators, but the SAF have reportedly not consented to stop fighting.
• Satellite imagery analyzed by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab says that from Nov. 2-4, RSF fighters blocked a key berm crossing at the Garni Gate, an earthen-walled passage that had been used by civilians running from months of siege and violence. By Nov. 4, the images show that earth had been pushed across the berm from both sides, trapping thousands of people inside the city.
“This action likely closes one of the last major exit points for civilians attempting to escape El-Fasher,” the report said. New satellite imagery collected on Nov. 6 also appears to show the burning of objects that may be consistent with human remains at two RSF-controlled sites: Mellit Gate, on the northern edge of the city, and the grounds of Saudi Hospital, where a mass killing was previously documented.
Stories on the ground from El Fasher: Recording of the Norwegian Refugee Council’s media briefing on Nov. 6.
Wednesday, Nov. 5
• Spokesperson’s briefing: The UN System in Cuba launched its plan of action to support the $74 million national response to Hurricane Melissa, which killed 43 people and injured dozens more, with 13 people still missing, to provide health supplies, water and sanitation, shelter, education and early recovery to one million people in the eastern provinces of Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín and Guantánamo, said UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq. The UN and its partners continue to scale up assistance in Haiti’s Grand Sud region, which suffered the most from the hurricane.
Thursday, Nov. 6
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Speaking at the forum of leaders of the Belém Climate Summit in Brazil, Guterres said “we have failed to ensure that we remain below 1.5 degrees” and scientists have said a temporary overshoot beyond the 1.5-degree limit, which will “unleash far greater destruction and costs for every nation,” is “inevitable, starting at the latest in the early 2030s.” The forum precedes the official opening of the UN-led annual climate change conference, or COP30, in the city, starting on Nov. 10. Guterres added that if we “act now, at speed and scale,” the world can limit the overthrow’s length and scale by, among other steps, cutting global emissions “deeply”; protecting carbon sinks (forests and oceans); and drastically increasing investments in adaptation and resilience.
Friday, Nov. 7
• Spokesperson’s briefing: OCHA warns of a sharp rise in Israeli settler violence against Palestinians. In October, the UN recorded 264 settler attacks causing casualties, property damage or both, the highest monthly toll in nearly two decades of record-keeping. As of Nov. 5, 42 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year, or one in every five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in 2025 so far has been a child.
ICYMI:
US: Universal Periodic Review (by the Human Rights Council)
Nigeria: “Trump, Nigeria and ‘Christian Genocide’” Foreign Exchanges, a Substack newsletter
US: “Concerns at ILO Over Expected Appointment of Close Trump Adviser” media report
UAE: “United Arab Emirates: More Than a Hub for Conflict-Gold?” media report
Sudan: “The Price of Silence in Sudan” analysis
New York City: “What Zohran Mamdani Means for the United Nations” podcast episode “To Save Us From Hell”
UN: Fading Causes podcast: “How Do We Heal the Ailing United Nations?” featuring Matthias Schmale, UN representative in Ukraine
France: “France Adopts Consent-Based Definition of Rape After Years of Debate”
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.
