Collapse of Gaza Ceasefire and its Devastating Impact on Women and Girls

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Opinion

Women walk along destroyed streets in Gaza. Credit: UNDP/Abed Zagout

JERUSALEM, Apr 2 2025 (IPS) – The end of the tenuous ceasefire in Gaza is having disastrous consequences for women and girls. From 18 to 25 March—in just those 8 days, 830 people were killed—174 women, 322 children, with 1,787 more injured.

Let me break that down because these are not just numbers, they are people: every single day from the 18 to 25 March, an average of 21 women and over 40 children are killed.

This is not collateral damage; this is a war where women and children bear the highest burden. They comprise nearly 60 per cent of the recent casualties, a harrowing testament to the indiscriminate nature of this violence.

What we are hearing from our partners and the women and girls we serve is a call to end this war, to let them live. It is a situation of pure survival and survival of their families. Because as they say, there is simply nowhere to go. They are telling us they will not move again, since no safe places anyway.

As a woman recently said to us from Deir Al Balah, “My mother says, ‘Death is the same, whether in Gaza City or Deir al-Balah… We just want to return to Gaza.” This is a feeling that is shared by many other women I had an opportunity to meet with during my last visit in January and February.

How is the UN helping civilians in Gaza?. Credit: UNICEF/Abed Zagout

The UN says Gaza is facing a food crisis.

Another woman from Al-Mirak tells us “We’re glued to the news. Life has stopped. We didn’t sleep all night, paralyzed. We can’t leave. My area is cut off. I’m terrified of being hit – every possible nightmare races through my mind.” This is simply no way of living.

Since March 2nd, humanitarian aid has been halted by the Israelis. And people’s lives are again at risk since the Israeli bombardments resumed on March 18.

The ceasefire, while brief, had provided some breathing. During that time, I had the opportunity to visit some of our partner organizations who were repairing their offices in Gaza City with what material was available. I saw neighbours coming together to clean some of the rubble on their streets, heard children playing. Met with women who expressed their fragile hope for peace and for rebuilding their lives. I saw thousands of people on the roads back to Gaza City.

And now that hope is gone. For now, 539 days, the relentless war has ravaged Gaza, obliterating lives, homes, and futures. This is not merely a conflict; it is a war on women—on their dignity, their bodies, their very survival.

Women have been stripped of their fundamental rights, forced to exist in a reality where loss is their only constant. Cumulatively, over 50,000 people have been killed and more than 110,000 injured.

It is crucial to protect the rights and dignity of the people of Gaza, especially women and girls, who have borne the brunt of this war. Women are desperate for this nightmare to cease. But the horror persists, the atrocities escalate, and the world seems to be standing by, normalizing what should never be normalized.

As we have seen in these 18 months of war, women play a crucial role during times of crisis. However, after all this time, they speak of being trapped in a never-ending nightmare.

This war must end. I, and others, have echoed this plea countless times, amplifying the voices of the women inside Gaza. Yet the devastation deepens.

What will we tell future generations when they ask? That we did not know? That we did not see?

International humanitarian law must be upheld. The systems we established to protect humanity must be respected. All humans must be treated equally. This war is shattering core values and principles.

As UN Women, we join the UN Secretary-General in his strong appeal for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian access to be restored, and for the remaining hostages and all those arbitrarily detained to be released immediately and unconditionally.

Maryse Guimond, UN Women Special Representative in Palestine, speaking at the Palais des Nations from Jerusalem, on the disastrous consequences for women and girls following the end of a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza.

IPS UN Bureau

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Will UN be a Possible Target as US Goes on a Rampage?

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UNITED NATIONS, Mar 26 2025 (IPS) – The Trump administration, spearheaded by senior adviser Elon Musk, has been on a wild rampage: mass layoffs of government employees, gutting federal agencies, dismantling the Department of Education and USAID, defying a federal judge and threatening universities with drastic cuts in grants and contracts—decisions mostly engineered by the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Perhaps with more to come.

The cuts were best symbolized with an image of Musk wielding a heavy chainsaw aimed at slashing “wasteful spending”

But the layoffs and subsequent reversals– the on-again, off-again decisions– have triggered chaos in the nation’s capital.

And political outrage is fast becoming the norm.

Musk, the tech billionaire, who acts as a virtual Prime Minister to President Trump, has called on the U.S. to exit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations.

“I agree,” he wrote in response to a post from a right-wing political commentator, saying “it’s time” for the U.S. to leave NATO and the UN.”

The threat against the UN has been reinforced following a move by several Republican lawmakers who have submitted a bill on the U.S. exit from the U.N., claiming that the organization does not align with the Trump administration’s “America First” agenda.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/no-sane-country-would-stand-this-lawmakers-launch-effort-withdraw-u-s-from-united-nations

What’s next?

The abrogation of the 1947 US-UN Headquarters Agreement?

That 78-year-old agreement helped establish the world body in a former decrepit slaughter house in Turtle Bay New York.

The Agreement is an international treaty, and under international law, treaties are generally binding on the parties that sign them. However, the U.S. has a constitutional process for withdrawing from treaties.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal March 14, titled “The U.N. Is Ripping America Off in New York”, Eugene Kontorovich, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a professor at George Mason University School of Law, points out the U.S. offered to host the newly-created U.N. after World War II, amid a wave of optimism about the organization’s ability to prevent future wars.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the land, and the headquarters was given an interstate-free loan from Washington that would be worth billions today.

The United Nations shall not be moved unless the headquarters district ceases to be used for that purpose, the agreement says. Some U.N. officials have taken this to mean the U.N. can’t be evicted.

“But the agreement is a treaty, and the default rule of international law is that treaties, unless they say otherwise, last as long as the parties wish. If the U.S. cancels the treaty, the entire arrangement disappears, nothing in the treaty’s text prohibits withdrawal. Indeed, had an irrevocable agreement been intended, (the US) Congress, which is needed to approve treaties, would not have allowed the agreement to pass without making it explicit”.

While the treaty refers to the “permanent” headquarters of the U.N., this simply means “durable.” Many international treaties use “permanent” in this way, to mean long-lasting, not eternal. The Permanent International Court of Justice lasted from 1922-46.

“Trump should reopen the 1947 agreement locating its headquarters. It was a terrible real-estate deal”, declared Kontorovich

Dr. Stephen Zunes, a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS removing the United Nations headquarters from the United States has long been advocated by the far right and generally dismissed as a fringe idea not to be taken seriously.

However, as the Trump administration has already demonstrated, even the most extreme ideologically-driven proposals can indeed end up being implemented as policy, he said.

“The United States has not always upheld its obligations under the treaty, such as in 1988 when the Reagan administration refused to allow PLO chairman Yasir Arafat to address the world body, resulting in the entire General Assembly relocating to Geneva to hear his speech”.

Removing the United Nations headquarters from the United States, he argued, “would symbolize the end of the global leadership we have had since the end of World War II when the victorious allies established the world body.”

Along with the Trump administration’s decision to disestablish the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Fulbright Program, and other symbols of American leadership internationally, it would end any semblance of the United States remaining a preeminent force in international cooperation.

At the same time, the United States has increasingly become an outlier when it comes to the international community rather than a leader or partner.

“This is true even under Democratic administrations, as indicated by Biden’s rogue positions in regard to Israel’s war on Gaza, Palestinian statehood, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and other UN institutions.”

Having the UN headquarters in a more neutral location may end up being for the best, said Dr Zunes, who has written extensively on the politics of the United Nations.

So far, the US has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), while it has warned that two other UN organizations “deserve renewed scrutiny”– the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—a warning seen as a veiled threat of US withdrawal from the two UN agencies.

Meanwhile, the United States has cut $377 million worth of funding to the UN reproductive and sexual health agency, UNFPA.

Giving an indication of UN agencies moving some of their functions out of the US, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters at a briefing last month: “We have been investing in Nairobi, creating the conditions for Nairobi to receive services that are now in more expensive locations”.

“And UNICEF will be transferring soon some of the functions to Nairobi. And UNFPA will be essentially moving to Nairobi. And I can give you many other examples of things that are being done and correspond to the idea that we must be effective and cost-effective,” he said.

Asked about the possible withdrawal of the US from the world body, Martin S. Edwards, Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, told IPS it would not be clear what the intent of this move would be.

In fact, what is certain, he pointed out, is that it would be a mistake of gigantic proportions. The Trump administration, solely to curry favor with some small fraction of its base, would be handing a huge diplomatic victory to China, who would not hesitate to jump at the chance to host the UN.

“And even this White House has to see that, so I don’t see this as advancing US interests in any form. On the contrary, had the White House thought the UN as unimportant, they wouldn’t have designated Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador,” he declared.

A report in the Washington Examiner last January said Stefanik, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, and the US Ambassador-elect to the UN, has vowed to utilize her skills as a lawmaker to scrutinize the funding provided to the U.N. and cut the budget provided if necessary.

“As a member of Congress, I also understand deeply that we must be good stewards of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” Stefanik said. “The U.S. is the largest contributor to the U.N. by far. Our tax dollars should not be complicit in propping up entities that are counter to American interests, antisemitic, or engaging in fraud, corruption, or terrorism.”

As the largest single contributor, the US currently pays 22% of the United Nations’ regular budget and 27% of the peacekeeping budget. Still, the US owes $1.5 billion to the UN’s regular budget.

And, between the regular budget, the peacekeeping budget, and international tribunals, the total amount the US owes is $2.8 billion.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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‘What’s Next?’ Women-led Movements Fear for the Future

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Opinion

Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69)—March 10-21, 2025

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 24 2025 (IPS) – Women rights advocates who gathered at UN Headquarters for the world’s biggest meeting (10 -21 March) on gender equality have been sharing their concerns about the growing backlash against feminism, and how major funding cuts from donor countries could threaten programmes aimed at improving the lives of women and girls.

They came from all over the world for the Commission on the Status of Women, two weeks of discussions, talks and networking. At the opening session, Sima Bahous, the head of UN Women (the United Nations agency for gender equality), told them that “misogyny is on the rise” and, at a townhall convened by António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General said that a “furious backlash” threatens to “push progress into reverse.

UN News met some of the delegates to gauge the mood and find out how they are they are feeling about the backlash against feminism flagged by UN Women, and what the threat of massive funding cuts from some major donor countries could mean for their organisations, and the people they support.

‘We’re going to move backwards before we move go forward’

Grace Forrest is the founding director of Walk Free, Walk Free, an international human rights group focused on the eradication of modern slavery, which produces the Global Slavery Index, considered to be the world’s leading data set on measuring and understanding modern slavery. Credit: UN News/Conor Lennon

“We’re here because women and girls are disproportionately impacted by nearly every form of modern slavery, from forced marriage to forced labour, debt bondage and human trafficking.

Their vulnerability to modern slavery is rising and their rights risk being rolled back throughout the world, so we wanted to come to here to put modern slavery on the agenda, in the context of an authoritarian government in the United States which is trying to ban words such as race, gender and feminism. We won’t be silenced or erased.

Today, we’re seeing misogyny on full display, through social media and through world leaders not mincing their words and people electing leaders who disregard safety and the value of women in the public forum.

We’re extremely concerned by funding cuts from major donors. We’re hearing about frontline organisations, run by people who have survived debt bondage and forced labour, having to take loans to try and keep their organisations afloat. Some of the most effective frontline organisations are being hit hardest and fastest.

Advancing the rights of women and girls is actually quite a tall order right now and it’s a scary fact to face, that we’re actually just going to be hoping to not move backwards. And I think we are going to go backwards before we go forward.

This is a time for systems to step up and directly call out the need for funding on issues like modern slavery.”

Soundcloud

‘We are highly affected by budget cuts’

Moufeeda Haidar from youth NGO Restless Development, speaks in the GA Hall during CSW69. She is the Senior Regional Programme Coordinator at Restless Development, a non-profit global agency that supports the collective power of young leaders. She was a Global Youth Fellow for Gender Equality in 2024. Credit: UN News

“I’m based in Lebanon, and I mainly work on a programme which tackles sexual and reproductive health and rights for young woman living with disabilities, women living with HIV, those who identify as LGBTQ, and displaced woman across nine countries, between Africa, Central America and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The backlash against feminism has always been there. Sometimes it’s very politicised and it’s used to the advantage of the patriarchy, so that women’s rights and gender rights attacked. There’s definitely a rising backlash in Lebanon and the MENA region.

The current political environment is not a surprise for us. We are already highly affected by budget cuts in the MENA region. Funds for youth programmes have been cut for years. In our latest State of Youth Civil Society report, 72 per cent of respondents said that they barely receive any funds for climate action projects.

We are very worried about how to plan. We work with grassroots organisations, women-led organisations and feminist movements and we have created networks in these countries and seen the amazing work that they have done throughout the years. We are wondering what’s next. How are we going to support this network?”

Linda Sestock is the president of the Canadian Federation of University Women, which awards universiCredit: ty scholarships to women and promotes the participation of women in all aspects of emerging technology and leadership. Credit: UN News

“We’re extremely concerned, especially after seeing what happened with our neighbours to the south of us: we have noticed how alliances have shifted in the United States and we’re very fearful. We want to make sure that it doesn’t happen in Canada as well.

Most Canadians believe in the rights of our fellow women and that we’re going to be able to continue on the same trajectory that we’re on, but we need to be careful and we need to make sure that we don’t backslide.

We need to be hyper focused about ensuring that women are educated and that they’re entering the fields of technology, engineering, science and mathematics, because right now algorithms are slanted towards men and can be used against women.

We’re worried when we see that some words are not allowed anymore, such as diversity, equity and inclusion [a list of words banned or discouraged by the US administration has reportedly been drawn up and circulated].

We have a lot of professors in our organisation, and people are losing grants because they are being asked to remove words like female and gender. They are refusing and so they are losing funding, and we need to make sure that we continue to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion.

It boggles the mind and leaves me speechless.”

These interviews have been edited for clarity and length

Source: UN News

IPS UN Bureau

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Why “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” Advocates Cling to Genocide Denial

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SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Mar 20 2025 (IPS) – Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza comes several months after both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports concluding without equivocation that Israel was engaged in genocide. But very few members of Congress dare to acknowledge that reality, while their silence and denials scream out complicity.

In a New York Times interview last weekend, the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put deep moral evasion on display. Among the “slogans” that are used when criticizing Israel, he said, “The one that bothers me the most is genocide. Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people, a whole nationality of people. So, if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened.”

Schumer is wrong.

The international Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” — with such actions as killing, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

Such actions by Israel have been accompanied by clear evidence of genocidal intent — underscored by hundreds of statements by Israeli leaders and policy shapers. Scarcely three months into the Israeli war on Gaza, scholars Raz Segal and Penny Green pointed out, a database compiled by the Law for Palestine human rights organization “meticulously documents and collates 500 statements that embody the Israeli state’s intention to commit genocide and incitement to genocide since October 7, 2023.”

Those statements “by people with command authority — state leaders, war cabinet ministers and senior army officers — and by other politicians, army officers, journalists and public figures reveal the widespread commitment in Israel to the genocidal destruction of Gaza.”

Since March 2, the United Nations reports, “Israeli authorities have halted the entry of all lifesaving supplies, including food, medicine, fuel and cooking gas, for 2.1 million people.” Now, Israel’s horrendous crusade to destroy Palestinian people in Gaza — using starvation as a weapon of war and inflicting massive bombardment on civilians — has resumed after a two-month ceasefire.

On Tuesday, children were among the more than 400 people killed by Israeli airstrikes, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed that “this is only the beginning.”

It’s almost impossible to find a Republican in Congress willing to criticize the pivotal U.S. backing for Israel’s methodical killing of civilians. It’s much easier to find GOP lawmakers who sound bloodthirsty.

A growing number of congressional Democrats — still way too few — have expressed opposition. In mid-November, 17 Senate Democrats and two independents voted against offensive arms sales to Israel. But in reality, precious few Democratic legislators really pushed to impede such weapons shipments until after last November’s election. Deference to President Biden was the norm as he actively enabled the genocide to continue.

This week, renewal of Israel’s systematic massacres of Palestinian civilians has hardly sparked a congressional outcry. Silence or platitudes have been the usual.

For “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street, the largest and most influential liberal Zionist organization in the United States, evasions have remained along with expressions of anguish. On Tuesday the group’s founder and president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, issued a statement decrying “the decision by Netanyahu to reignite this horrific war” and calling for use of “all possible leverage to pressure each side to restore the ceasefire.”

But, as always, J Street did not call for the U.S. government to stop providing the weapons that make the horrific war possible.

That’s where genocide denial comes in.

For J Street, as for members of Congress who’ve kept voting to enable the carnage with the massive U.S.-to-Israel weapons pipeline, support for that pipeline requires pretending that genocide isn’t really happening.

While writing an article for The Nation (“Has J Street Gone Along With Genocide?”), I combed through 132 news releases from J Street between early October 2023 and the start of the now-broken ceasefire in late January of this year. I found that on the subject of whether Israel was committing genocide, J Street “aligned itself completely with the position of the U.S. and Israeli governments.”

J Street still maintains the position that it took last May, when the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in Rafah. “J Street continues to reject the allegation of genocide in this case,” a news release said.

It would be untenable to publicly acknowledge the reality of Israeli genocide while continuing to support shipping more weaponry for the genocide. That’s why those who claim to be “pro-peace” while supporting more weapons for war must deny the reality of genocide in Gaza.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, includes an afterword about the Gaza war.

IPS UN Bureau

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Musk is Wrong. Empathy is Not a Weakness

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Opinion

BANGKOK, Thailand, Mar 19 2025 (IPS) – “The fundamental weakness is empathy,” Musk recently told radio podcast host Joe Rogan. “There is a bug, which is the empathy response.”

As Musk has established himself as at least the second most powerful person in an administration seeking a wholesale remaking of institutions, rules and norms, what he said matters, because it encapsulates a political plan. What the Project 2025 report set out in over 900 turgid pages, Musk’s remark captures in a simple pithy mantra for the social media age.

Credit: U.S. Air Force / Trevor Cokley

And as (let us acknowledge it) the Trump revolution is currently popular with at least large parts of the US electorate, and some overseas too, what Musk said summarises also the worldview of a social-cultural moment and movement on the march.

Core to the argument against empathy is the claim that ethical and practical considerations run counter to each other. The guardrails of rules and norms about caring for others, it argues, don’t only hold us back, they tie our hands behind our back.

Morality is for losers, it suggests, and who wants to lose? Only when we cut ourselves free of the burden of looking after and looking out for others, it posits, can we soar. The practical applications of this worldview are all encompassing.

They include the ripping up of international cooperation, the gutting of life-saving programmes for people in poverty abroad and at home, and the violating of due process for protestors, prisoners, migrants, minorities and anyone (who can be made to be) unpopular. That’s not how it ends, that’s how it starts.

A collapse of empathy would be an existential threat to the world. Hannah Arendt, reflecting on her witness to, and escape from, the rise of fascism in the 1930s, concluded “the death of empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” The stakes are too high for us to fail.

So how can we respond to the argument against empathy?

One way would be to stick only to ethics, arguing, simply, “it is our duty to sacrifice for others, and failing to do so is just wrong!” This has driven what has come to be known as the charity narrative.

This approach seems like a flawed strategy because by refusing to engage in the practicality conversation, it concedes it to the cynics and nihilists, accepting the framing of morality as a kind of self-immolation that brings only noble suffering and that cares only about stances, not consequences.

Another way would be to give up on ethics, and make only the most selfish arguments for doing good, like “we should not show ourselves to be unreliable because that would get us knocked off the top perch by our rivals when we must be Number One!” This too seems like a flawed strategy because it reinforces variations of dog-eat-dog as the only frames for success.

What both of those approaches get wrong is that they accept the frame that ethics and practicality are separate. Older wisdoms have long understood them as inseparable. What can in current debates seem like a rivalrous relationship between “what is good?” and “what is smart?”, or “what is moral?” and “what is wise?”, we often find when we look more deeply is not.

That often, the way in which societies developed moral principles was that they are ways to abstract what people have learnt from experience works. When, for example, people say in the African principle of Ubuntu “I am because you are”, that is not just a moral or theological point, it is literally true.

It is what public health teaches us: that I am healthy because my neighbour is healthy. (Even Musk was forced to concede to public pressure on this with his partial admission that “with USAID, one of the things we cancelled, accidentally, was Ebola prevention, and I think we all want Ebola prevention.”

Fearful of the reaction to his initial cancellation of Ebola prevention, he even claimed, falsely, to have fixed that “mistake” straight away, but what matters here is that the case against Ebola prevention collapsed so fast because interdependence was so quickly understood.)

So too, history has continuously shown that I am only secure when my neighbour is secure, and that I thrive when my neighbour thrives. Perhaps, for oligarchs, a ruthless, rule-less, world can work. (Perhaps not, however, when the fall-out comes between the “two bros”.)

But for the 99.9% of us, as John Donne wrote, “no man is an island”. We are interdependent and inseparable. Alone we are weak but together we are strong. Or, as the brilliant bleak joke of old ascribed to Benjamin Franklin put it, “we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall hang separately.”

The mutual interest argument, which highlights to people “we each have a stake in the well-being of all, looking out for others is not losing,” does not take us away from values, it reinforces them.

“There is an interrelated structure of reality. We are all tied in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” That was Revd Martin Luther King in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, and yet he was making an argument that you could say is the argument of mutual interest.

Empathy is not pity. It is rooted in mutuality. As as an ethical frame, it looks at a person in need, perhaps a person that some others don’t fully see, and says straight away “I ought to connect, as that could have been me.” Interdependence, as a practical frame, reflects on the situation of that person, and comes through that reflection to understand that “I need to connect, as that could next time be me.”

Morality and wisdom guide us in the same direction; and as the fastest way there is empathy, that makes empathy not humanity’s weakness but our superpower.

Ben Phillips is the author of How to Fight Inequality.

IPS UN Bureau

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Is UN in Danger of Losing its Battle for Gender Equality?

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Credit: Inclusion Hub

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 14 2025 (IPS) – The Trump administration’s decision to abandon DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion— which was aimed at promoting fair treatment in the work place, is having its repercussions at the United Nations.

The US has been exerting pressure on UN agencies to drop DEI largely protecting minority groups, and women in particular, who have been historically underrepresented or subject to discrimination.

At least one UN agency has dropped an entire section on DEI following U.S. interventions. And there are reports that some UN agencies are also scrubbing their websites of all references to DEI.

Faced with threats of either US withdrawal or funding cuts, some of the UN agencies are bending over backwards to appease the Trump administration.

The US has already decided to withdraw from the Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization (WHO), while two other UN agencies are under “renewed scrutiny”—the” UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The United States has cut $377 million worth of funding to the UNFPA, it was confirmed last week, leading to potentially “devastating impacts”, on women and girls.

The threat against the UN has been reinforced following a move by several Republican lawmakers who have submitted a bill on the U.S. exit from the U.N., claiming that the organization does not align with the Trump administration’s “America First” agenda.

Speaking at a side event during the annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), March 13, Jonathan Shrier, Acting U.S. Representative to the Economic and Social Council said: “At the United Nations, the United States continues to advocate for women’s empowerment, while firmly opposing attempts to redefine womanhood in ways that undermine the real and meaningful progress women have made.”

“We are committed to promoting policies that support women and families in a way that recognizes and celebrates the biological and social differences that make us who we are. In New York, we have engaged in tough negotiations in a wide variety of UN resolutions, fighting against gender ideology, and calling votes, if necessary, to advance President Trump’s America First foreign policy.”

According to UN Dispatch March 13, even before the CSW began, “the U.S. sought to throw a wrench in the entire event by objecting to otherwise anodyne references to gender equality in a conference document, under the premise that such language directly contradicts Trump’s executive orders against DEI”. In other words, Trump tried to block references to gender equality in a conference dedicated to gender equality.

And according to an Executive Order from the White House last January, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), “shall coordinate the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/

Joseph Chamie, a consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division, told IPS the Trump administration’s domestic decision to abandon DEI has serious implications for the United Nations, especially with US threats of withdrawal and funding cuts.

In particular, the US administration’s decision to abandon DEI, he said, aims to not only reshape US-UN relations but also reshape practices and policies of the United Nations and its various agencies and programs. Diversity and meritocracy concerns vary across country populations and differ considerably globally.

Similar to America, however, countries worldwide are struggling with the issue of how best to balance diversity and meritocracy across disparate ethnic, racial, caste, linguistic and religious subgroups in their populations.

“How best to balance diversity and meritocracy remains a major challenge for countries and the United Nations. That challenge has become more difficult for many countries as a result of the prejudicial use of racial, ethnic, linguistic, ancestry and origin categories.”, said Chamie

In a growing number of areas, including politics, employment, careers, education, armed forces, immigration, the judicial system, entertainment and sports, countries are making far-reaching decisions regarding when to strive for diversity and when to stress meritocracy.

Many countries with domestic concerns about DEI are likely to welcome the Trump administration’s attempt to diminish or do away with DEI initiatives at the United Nations, he pointed out.

Given a growing world population of more than 8 billion people, the shifting demographic landscapes of national populations and the fundamental need to ensure human rights for all, the challenge of balancing diversity and meritocracy can be expected to become even more critical and consequential for countries as well as for the United Nations in the years ahead, declared Chamie.

According to PassBlue, the US delegation has been telling some UN entities they must excise language on DEI, from their work. The US remarks have been repeated in one form or another to the boards of UN Women, UNICEF and World Food Program. (The latter two are run by Americans.)

Dr. Purnima Mane, President and CEO of Pathfinder International and former Deputy Executive Director (Programme) and UN Assistant-Secretary-General (ASG) at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS it is indeed unfortunate that the US government’s decision to move away from diversity, equity and inclusion is creating ripple effects among other entities especially those who benefit from US support and contributions.

Early evidence, she pointed out, suggests that some UN agencies are beginning to display increased caution regarding DEI, especially its positioning and language. Ironically this caution is occurring around the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (16-21 March 2025).

“The initial reactions of caution around DEI which we are witnessing from all organizations and entities which the US works with or is a part of (whether it is the UN, the non-profit organizations, major donors, other governments) are inevitable”.

The US, she said, has played a key role in the formation, development and evolution of the UN and of course continues to provide key support to it.

“It is therefore not surprising that the UN to which the US contributes in many significant ways, is sensitive to the evolution in US views but this should not result in the UN shirking away from the main principles on which it was created.”

DEI, she noted, is an acronym that has come to mean different things to different people and countries but its core philosophy and principles are at the root of the UN and can and need to be protected even if the language of DEI is altered.

“Within the UN there needs to be a healthy, constructive debate and discussion among Member States on how resistance to DEI could threaten the philosophy and principles for which the UN stands and to which the governments collectively signed on, thereby questioning the very existence of the UN.”

“Surely, all Member States feel empowered to voice their views and find ways to ensure that the basic principles of the UN remain steadfast. Putting your own country first does not automatically imply that one must not focus on a common, agreed-to agenda based on respect for all,” declared Dr Mane.

Ian Richards, a former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations and an economist at the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) told IPS: “I don’t think it is correct to say the UN is abandoning DEI”.

The Secretary-General, he said, “is fortunately a big champion and continues to support landmark initiatives on sex, race, disability, regional origin, age and gender identity”.

To varying extents these set hiring quotas, mandatory training and reporting requirements.

A conference will be organized on DEI this summer in Lisbon, hosted by the Government of Portugal, to identify further ways to strengthen measures. Unlike other organizations the Secretary-General has also maintained the right of staff to choose their pronouns in email communications.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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