The United States captured Venezuelan president Nicholás Maduro from his home in Caracas early this year to try him on narcotic charges in New York City. President Trump has threatened Cuba and Colombia with military operations as well.
Meanwhile, gang violence in Haiti has nearly collapsed all government structures as 1.5 million people are living in temporary shelters and 16,000 others have been killed since January 2021 in gang-dominated parts of the country. Heavily militarized thugs control almost 90 percent of Port-au-Prince, the capital, and have spilled into central Haiti.
The painfully slow rollout of the United Nations-sanctioned Gang Suppression Force in the country reflects the lack of international urgency to solve the extreme security problems there.
Colombia, which is rotating president of the UN Security Council for June, hosts one of the largest populations of displaced Venezuelans in the Latin American region, severely straining its economy and social infrastructure.
This week, Colombia’s presidential election entered a decisive runoff after no candidate secured a majority in the first round, held on May 31. A right-wing lawyer, Abelardo de la Espriella, finished first with approximately 44 percent of the vote, narrowly ahead of President Gustavo Petro’s favored candidate and leftist Senator Iván Cepeda, who won about 41 percent. A second-round contest is set for June 21 in an election widely viewed as a referendum on Petro’s legacy. (Constitutionally, he could not run for a consecutive term.)
These are just some of the burning issues that Latin American countries are grappling with, but they won’t be on the agenda of Bogotá’s presidency of the 15-member Council, according to the provisional program of work. Instead, Colombia plans to concentrate on conflicts in the Mideast, women’s participation in peace processes — a topic it knows intimately from its 2016 peace pact — and the protection of children in armed conflicts, among other matters.
Addressing reporters at UN headquarters on June 1, Colombia’s permanent representative to the UN, Leonor Zalabata Torres, said the Council presidency would be guided by the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereign equality, territorial integrity, noninterference and the peaceful settlement of disputes. These are references many Council members repeatedly cite in their rotating presidencies as disputes rage worldwide, infringing on these principles.
Colombia’s take on the Mideast
While the role of Council presidency is mostly as coordinator, most members — especially the 10 elected ones — use the opportunity to highlight issues closest to their country’s national and regional interests. China, a permanent member of the Council and the chair in May, called attention to the troubled multilateral system as Washington is pulling back from international cooperation. Bahrain, the chair in April, led an open debate on maritime security, drawing attention to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
“The defense and effective application of these principles is not an end in itself,” Zalabata said, translated from Spanish, “but rather an essential condition for preserving a shared framework of rules that allows states to coexist, cooperate and resolve disagreements peacefully.”
On its first day leading the Council, Colombia agreed to hold an emergency session requested by France to spotlight the escalating violence in Lebanon. Israel Defense Forces have advanced north of the Litani River, the traditional ceasefire line, capturing the historic Beaufort Castle and designating South Lebanon as an official combat zone.
Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, the assistant secretary-general for Africa in the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs-Peace Operations, told the Council at the emergency session on June 1 that the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), a peacekeeping mission, recorded 992 projectile trajectories from Israeli forces on May 30 alone, the highest daily count since the April 17 cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, the armed militia battling Israel.
Pobee said that over one million people have been displaced in Lebanon, describing the infrastructure damage as “catastrophic.” Since March 2, when the conflict was reignited after the US/Israeli strikes began against Iran, on Feb. 28, at least 3,412 people have been killed and more than 10,000 others injured in Lebanon, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA.
“Colombia’s decision to focus its signature event on the Middle East shows a state that is confident in its reading of world affairs,” Daniel Forti, who heads UN matters at the International Crisis Group think tank.
“Developments in the region move quickly and require sustained attention from the entire UN membership, not just the Security Council,” he added. “Bogotá could have used its presidency to spotlight issues in Latin America, but they likely see more value in keeping the spotlight on a region with pressing political and operational concerns for the UN.”
As part of that spotlight, Petro will chair a high-level Security Council debate on political solutions in the Mideast. Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, Petro has emerged as one of the most outspoken international critics of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. He has repeatedly condemned Israeli its operations, describing the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave as unacceptable and accusing Israel of committing acts that he says amount to collective punishment of Palestinians.
In May 2024, Colombia severed diplomatic relations with Israel. Announcing the decision during a May Day rally in Bogotá, Petro said Colombia could not maintain relations with what he described as a government carrying out a “genocide” against Palestinians.
Washington revoked Petro’s visa after he participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration during the UN General Assembly high-level week in New York City, in September 2025. During the rally, Petro called on US soldiers not to obey orders that he believed supported what he called atrocities in Gaza.
The US State Department said his remarks were “reckless and incendiary” and accused him of encouraging US troops to disobey orders.
As Petro’s term ends in August, Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, the director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) advocacy group, said the president wants to leave a legacy that goes beyond Colombia, and highlighting crises in Gaza and Lebanon is one way of doing that. (Zalabata is also expected to leave in August.)
“He has been outspoken in general on wars,” Sánchez-Garzoli said. “He spoke out against the Ukraine war, but he really became a champion against the genocide going on in Gaza by critisizing Isreal and the United States for was is going on there.”
Colombia has packed the Council in June with meetings on Africa and the Mideast as well as mandatory meetings. The members are expected to consider mandate renewals for the UN missions in Afghanistan and the Golan Heights and the renewal of the sanctions regime with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (another Council member).
Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
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