This Week @UN: Racing to bankruptcy; 2 SecGen hopefuls grilled; Armenia prefers Europe over Russia.
Plus: US-Iran peace plan; Haiti solidarity trip; excluding women from peace talks; Sudan atrocity risk; no calm in Lebanon; happy Juneteenth.
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• Our #1 story: The UN Chief’s Plan to Ease the Organization’s Cash Crunch, by Damilola Banjo
• Breaking: An argument broke out in a UN meeting between Vanessa Frazier, head of the UN Children and Armed Conflict office, and Danny Danon, Israel’s envoy to the UN, on June 19, regarding his demand that Pramila Patten, head of the Sexual Violence in Conflict office, resign because of her recent report blacklisting Israel. As Danon spoke, Frazier, presiding on the panel, interjected on a point of order, saying “no personal attacks,” to which Danon turned on her, yelling, “You will be quiet now!”
• Why are governments killing more children than rogue militias? For three decades, the UN has been tracking the gravest abuses inflicted on children in war, and in all that time, nonstate armed groups were the leading perpetrators. That changed in 2025, according to the secretary-general’s latest report on children and armed conflict, or CAAC, released on June 17, 2026. Government forces became the leading killers and maimers of children in multiple conflicts worldwide, the report revealed. Of the 76 parties making up its “list of shame,” only nine are government security forces, yet they were responsible for more violations against children than the 67 armed groups named.
Vanessa Frazier, the head of CAAC, said that 38,558 “grave violations” affecting 24,174 children were recorded in 2025, representing a small fraction of the actual abuses inflicted on people under age 18, as the UN cannot verify all incidents. The report documented a shocking 34 percent surge in verified child killings compared with the previous year. Increased use of AI and drones by state forces contributed to the jump. “When states, on whom the obligation to protect children falls, instead contribute to their suffering, it signals the deeper erosion of respect for international law,” a senior UN official told reporters.
For more context, the report in 2022 documented that nonstate armed groups were responsible for 55 percent and state forces 25 percent of verified violations. In the 2021 report, nonstate actors accounted for 90 and 95 percent of violations of recruitment and abductions of children, respectively. PassBlue’s assessment of the reports in the last five years shows that a new pattern started emerging in the 2023 study, with government forces identified as the main perpetrators for killing and maiming of children, attacks on schools and hospitals and denying humanitarian-aid access. In 2024, according to the report released in 2025, while nonstate groups were responsible for almost half of the violations, state forces were the primary perpetrators for casualties and denials of access to aid.
In the 2025 report, the five countries/places with the highest levels of violations were the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Myanmar and Somalia. The situation in Gaza and the West Bank was by far the most severe. “I think for state actors, it is worse than nonstate actors, because this mandate was originally created really to target armed groups and nonstate actors, ones who work outside of the law,” Frazier told reporters. “We cannot have state actors who are supposed to work within the realms of the law now working outside; that should not be acceptable.” — DAMILOLA BANJO
PassBlue this week:
• The UN Chief’s Plan to Ease the Organization’s Cash Crunch, exclusive deep dive by Damilola Banjo, who, using details from internal financial documents, copious UN closed-door negotiations on financial rules and interviews with senior UN officials and experts, lays out the heated debate among member states on whether to freeze a flawed credit system to free up cash or to reform the entire financial architecture.
• The Latest Candidate to Lead the UN Suggests Creating a Crisis-Prevention Hub, Mita Hosali reports on María Fernanda Espinosa’s candidacy.
• Armenia’s Post-Electoral Path Moves Toward Europe and Away From Russia, report by Sandra Sadek from Yerevan
• Guyana’s Candidate Is Aiming to Be the First ‘She’ Secretary-General, Damilola Banjo reports on Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett’s candidacy
Top UN news:
Monday, June 15
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the news of the peace framework agreed between the US and Iran to provide an “immediate and permanent ceasefire,” reopen the Strait of Hormuz and hash out a plan for more specific negotiations. Guterres expressed “deep appreciation” to Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and other regional countries’ for their “constructive” role in the deal. The Islamabad memorandum of understanding was signed on June 17 by US President Trump in Versailles, France, and electronically by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
• Ahunna Eziakonwa of Nigeria is named special adviser on Africa, succeeding Cristina Duarte of Cabo Verde.
Tuesday, June 16
• Spokesperson’s briefing: On a “solidarity” trip to Haiti, Guterres met with Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, in Port-au-Prince, and toured Camp Vertières, which hosts the UN-endorsed Gang Suppression Force. There, he was briefed by the force commander and the UN Support Office for Haiti (UNSOH) about its work with the force. Guterres also met with Haitians affected by the continued violence in the country and civil society members. He ended his one-day trip meeting with President Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic in Santo Domingo and UN staff there. Guterres’s press briefing in Haiti.
Wednesday, June 17
• Spokesperson’s briefing: During a Security Council open debate, led by Colombia, on the women, peace and security agenda on enhancing peace deals with women’s participation, UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous said that women “bear a disproportionate share of the consequences of conflicts they neither choose nor lead.” Women, she added, often remain excluded from efforts to resolve the conflicts that disproportionately affect them and that their participation in UN-led processes is low, despite reaching around double the global average, or 16 to 23 percent, over the last five years.
Kaavya Asoka, executive director of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, said to the Security Council that it must “insist on women at the table.” This means “direct inclusion of diverse women, including women human rights defenders, peacebuilders and feminist movements, at all levels of decision-making, including Track 1 processes, with the target of 50%.”
Thursday, June 18
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Guterres is “deeply concerned” by intensifying fighting in and near the Sudanese city of El Obeid, particularly drone attacks hitting civilians and reports of “substantial military reinforcements” that “may indicate an imminent ground offensive” into the North Kordofan state capital, a major population center. Although the UN has no presence in El Obeid, other humanitarians continue their work there despite the deteriorating security situation, which UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said had the “potential of being atrocious.”
Guterres also called for the warring Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces to “engage with international efforts,” including those of his personal envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto. On June 19, Dujarric said the envoy had just spoken on the phone with the RSF commander-in-chief, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, to try to urgently de-escalate the tensions in El Obeid. Haavisto is also engaging “member state partners with influence over the conflict parties to encourage their commitment to genuine dialogue” and to convey that an attack on El Obeid must be avoided. Dujarric noted about a possible massacre: “There’s still time for this operation not to take place.”
Friday, June 19
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Dujarric said the UN welcomes a reported ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah (which is part of the US-Iran MoU), but on June 18 the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) detected 52 Israeli “violations of the Lebanese airspace,” as well as 217 “projectile trajectories” — 188 attributed to the Israeli military and 29 presumably attributed to Hezbollah – with the UN continuing to call on “all parties to cease hostilities.”
On June 19, UNIFIL detected a “significant escalation” of 718 trajectories between midnight and 4 PM: 695 from Israel and 53 presumably from Hezbollah; and “49 violations of Lebanese airspace and 51 airstrikes” by the Israeli military, which killed 50 people (most likely attacks responding to Hezbollah reportedly killing four Israeli troops in South Lebanon). “We continue to condemn and to be horrified by the killings of civilians in Lebanon,” Dujarric said on June 19, referring to the 50 dead. (The latest attacks in Lebanon have delayed technical talks in Switzerland to further the Iran-US peace plan.)
ICYMI:
US: Digital Colonialism: US Demands to Access Africans’ Data Raise Privacy, Sovereignty Concerns, news article
US: US Announces More Than $1 Billion in Assistance to Unicef and World Food Program to Address Global Humanitarian Needs, State Dept. statement
US: DOGE Cuts Left America Exposed to a Flesh-Eating Superparasite, NGO newsletter
US: Trump Administration to End Pepfar Funding for South Africa, news article
Media: AI Journalism and the Uncertain Future of the Public Square, publisher remarks
Central African Republic: Former CAR Leader Bozizé on Trial Over Crimes Against Humanity, news article
Small states: Beyond Great Powers: The Role of Small States in the Security Council, think tank analysis
SecGen candidates: Embed Science as a Pillar of Multilateralism, letter from global scientific community
This article was updated to include breaking news about the argument at the UN between Vanessa Frazier and Danny Danon over a UN report.
Dulcie Leimbach is a co-founder, with Barbara Crossette, of PassBlue. For PassBlue and other publications, Leimbach has reported from New York and overseas from West Africa (Burkina Faso and Mali) and from Europe (Scotland, Sicily, Vienna, Budapest, Kyiv, Armenia, Iceland, The Hague and Cyprus). She has provided commentary on the UN for BBC World Radio, ARD German TV and Radio, NHK’s English channel, Background Briefing with Ian Masters/KPFK Radio in Los Angeles and the Foreign Press Association.
Previously, she was an editor for the Coalition for the UN Convention Against Corruption; from 2008 to 2011, she was the publications director of the United Nations Association of the USA. Before UNA, Leimbach was an editor at The New York Times for more than 20 years. She began her reporting career in small-town papers in San Diego, Calif., and graduating to the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. Leimbach has been a fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies as well as at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; taught news reporting at Hofstra University; and guest-lectured at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the CUNY Journalism School. She graduated from the University of Colorado and has an M.F.A. in writing from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
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