This Week @UN: Gambians’ journey to justice; postwar Gaza with Gazans; France helms the UN Security Council amid global turmoil.
Plus: Gaza killing fields; cholera in Haiti; Syria surviving; slashing UNOCHA workforce.
Follow us on Blue Sky, Twitter (X), Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn
• Our #1 story this week: Hard Questions Remain on Recent Killing of 15 Aid Workers by Israel, by Damilola Banjo
• Our #1 story this month: Mexico’s President Unites the Nation Against Trump, While Facing Other Crises at Home, by Mariana Hernández Ampudia
From PassBlue this week:
• ‘Portrait of Jammeh’: Gambians’ Long Search for Justice, an Audio Documentary, by Damilola Banjo.
Keep reading
• Postwar-Gaza Plans Cannot Exclude Palestinians, by Mamoun Besaiso (reposted from Diplomacy Now)
Keep reading
• French Fries Will Stay, So Will the Statue of Liberty: France Leads the UN Security Council, by Damilola Banjo
Keep reading
• Reupping: Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine’s new permanent representative to the UN, arrives in New York City soon
Top UN news:
Monday, April 7
• Spokesperson’s briefing: The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) issued a joint statement “calling on the world to react with urgency to save Palestinians in Gaza,” as Israel’s monthlong blockade on commercial goods and humanitarian aid into Gaza is depriving 2.1 million people of food, medicine, fuel and shelter supplies. Israel’s “unabated” military attacks are leaving Palestinians, including many children, “trapped, bombed and starved again” and displacing survivors whose basic needs cannot be met, the statement said.
Also on Gaza, Secretary-General António Guterres called for an “independent, transparent, and effective investigation” into the killing of 15 emergency rescue and aid workers in Rafah — including a local UNRWA staffer — after a video surfaced publicly, showing Israeli soldiers ambushing the humanitarians driving clearly marked Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) ambulances and other rescue vehicles, discounting Israel’s initial claim that the convoy had been moving in the dark suspiciously toward their forces without headlights on: “It was clear then when presented with facts on video, [the Israelis] changed their narrative,” said UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.
[Updates, April 9: Israeli officials from Jerusalem, accompanied by Israeli security forces, “forcibly entered six UNRWA schools in East Jerusalem” and “gave closure orders for the schools, effective in 30 days,” UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said on March 8, ending the academic year for around 800 boys and girls. The illegal-closure orders followed the Knesset legislation earlier this year aiming to end UNRWA operations, despite the schools being “protected by the privileges and immunities of the United Nations,” Lazzarini noted. April 10: Amid the continuing bombardment by the Israel Defense Forces, dozens of people were killed in Gaza City, including a strike on a residential building that killed at least eight children. “Many are still missing under the rubble,” Dujarric said. April 11: Israeli authorities issued two new displacement orders covering vast areas in northern/southern Gaza. OCHA says that more than two-thirds of Gaza “is either under active displacement orders or designated as ‘no-go’ zones.” The UN Human Rights Office says that the evacuation orders “raise serious concerns that Israel intends permanently to remove the civilian population from these areas” to create a buffer zone]
Tuesday, April 8
• No spokesperson’s briefing: Guterres spoke briefly to the press instead, saying that as Gaza marks one month without “a drop of aid” reaching its besieged population since the truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed on March 18, Guterres said “the floodgates of horror have reopened.” He emphasized that “ceasefires work” and that Israel must heed its “unequivocal obligations under international law” as the occupying power, ensuring that food and medical supplies get to the population. He also reiterated his call for an “independent investigation into the killing of humanitarians – including UN personnel,” but when asked if Israel’s operations in Gaza constitute a genocide, he said “the situation is sufficiently horrible not to be worried with the semantics.”
Wednesday, April 9
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Almost 1,300 cholera cases have been reported in Haiti this year as of March 29, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), including nine confirmed cases and 19 deaths, placing the fatality rate of 1.65 percent above the emergency 1 percent threshold. The Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) is overseeing the cholera response task force, but OCHA said the work remains “severely limited due to insecurity, lack of access and underfunding.”
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has not discussed Guterres’s recommendations of late February on how the UN can pay the logistical and structural costs of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) team combating gangs in Haiti. The Council is scheduled to discuss the matter on April 21, but one diplomat told PassBlue that members are waiting to hear about the US stance on the plan. (The USUN mission is taking its instructions from Washington as the mission still works without an ambassador. Dorothy Shea is interim chief of mission.) Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Haitian Transitional Presidential Council President Fritz Alphonse Jean on March 26, but no commitment was made by the US regarding Guterres’s recommendations. A new UN human rights report details a range of continued horrific abuses in Haiti, including gangs abducting women from their homes or public transport, raping them in public and sometimes killing them afterward.
Thursday, April 10
• Spokesperson’s briefing: UN Assistant Secretary-General Mohamed Khaled Khiari told the Security Council that Israel has launched “hundreds” of airstrikes across Syria since Dec. 8, including strikes on Damascus’s Hama Military Airport, despite the Council’s March 14 presidential statement calling for Syrians and Israelis to “support and protect” Syria’s “opportunity to stabilize after 14 years of conflict.” Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Pierre Lacroix added that the Israeli army occupies 10 “unauthorized” positions in the Bravo Line, the buffer zone between the two countries, a k a the UN Disengagement Observer Force Zone (UNDOF), and two nearby.
Relatedly, the US announced this week that no entity in Syria is recognized as a government, with a State Department spokesperson adding that an “administrative procedure” is underway to assess the legal status of the Syrian mission to the UN.
However, on April 7, UN spokesperson Dujarric told reporters: “The status of the Syrian Arab Republic in the United Nations remains unchanged. It continues to be a Member State of the United Nations. The issue of membership is guided by the Charter and the issue of recognition is one of Governments. The decision made by the host country to change the visas for members of the Permanent Mission, the Syrian Arab Republic to the UN does not impact Syria’s standing, the Syrian Arab Republic standing within the UN. It also does not affect the participation of permanent members within the work of the UN. They are accredited to the United Nations, and they must be continued to allow to do their work, and their functions in connection with their work with the UN.”
The US statement in the Security Council meeting on Syria on April 10 did not reference the country’s UN status but focused instead on Israel’s actions in Syria and terrorism there. US Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, retweeted (below) PassBlue quoting the Syrian envoy’s remarks, echoing US remarks. — DULCIE LEIMBACH
Friday, April 11
• Spokesperson’s briefing: Dujarric confirmed that OCHA chief Tom Fletcher told staff in a letter posted to the agency’s website that due to a funding gap of almost $60 million, the agency will decrease its workforce by 20 percent. “These exercises are driven by funding cuts and not by a reduction of humanitarian needs,” the letter says. Asked if the US is responsible for some of the cuts, Dujarric said that “some of the cuts have come from the US. Some have come from other countries.” Separately, the UN is facing a cash crisis, partly related to the US owing $1.495 billion to the UN regular budget.
ICYMI:
• Natalia Kanem, head of the UN Population Fund, is stepping down.
• Open letter to UN’s Guterres from the Swedish-based Women’s Platform for Action International (WoPAI) coalition, saying that the UN80 reform plan is an opportunity to re-evaluate the organization’s role “protecting and promoting” women’s rights.
• US Withdraws From Critical IMO Climate Meeting [IOM approved measures on April 11 that include a new fuel standard for ships and a global pricing mechanism for emissions, the UN said]
• Aid Cuts Could Leave More Women Dying in Pregnancy and Birth, UN Says
• Inter-Parliamentary Union’s New Gender Equality Action
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.
