This year the United Nations is marking its 80th anniversary, but diplomats don’t have much to celebrate.
World leaders are preparing for their 15 minutes on the world stage as the United Nations General Assembly high-level week gets underway Tuesday in New York.
This year, the world body is marking its 80th anniversary, but diplomats don’t have much to celebrate. The U.N. Security Council has been deadlocked over Russia’s war against Ukraine and Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. The United Nations itself is facing financial cutbacks, largely from the United States.
Here are a few of the things that we will be watching.Is the U.N. fit for purpose in the 21st century?
That was expected to be one of the big themes of the 80th U.N. General Assembly, as the world body struggles to promote peace in a way that was envisioned 80 years ago. But many diplomats are worried about more mundane things, like a financial crisis, and how the U.N. will survive a second Trump administration.
The U.N.’s top humanitarian and emergency relief official Tom Fletcher says the U.N. system is facing «this perfect strom: underfunded, overstretched and under attack.» It has lost 40% of its funding since last year and aid workers have been killed in record numbers, mostly in Gaza.
President Trump has cut funding and pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and UNESCO. His administration rejects the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals — guideposts for ending scourges such as poverty and hunger — and votes against any resolution that mentions them.
«The U.S. is behaving in an incredibly petty way», says Richard Gowan, the U.N. director for the International Crisis Group, a think tank.
Anjali Dayal, an expert on the U.N. who teaches at Fordham University, says the U.S. has gone from a key underwriter to a real source of instability at the U.N.
«From top to bottom, huge arenas of the U.N.’s work — things like poverty alleviation, things like public health, things like gender equality, things that fundamentally anchor the U.N.’s work — the U.S. is actively working to disrupt them», Dayal told NPR.Palestinian recognition
Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom on Sunday formally recognized a state of Palestine, joining a majority of countries that have already done so, in a move opposed by the United States and Israel. Earlier this month, 142 nations endorsed a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for «tangible, timebound, and irreversible steps» toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Trump administration has denounced the move and vowed not to give visas for members of the Palestinian Authority to attend the conference.
