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Israels Uno-Botschafter Danny Danon kritisiert die USA nach dem Iran-Deal scharf. Die Absichtserklärung sei «sehr schlecht» für Israel und die Golfstaaten. Er wirft Trump vor, dem Iran eine stärkere Position verschafft zu haben.

Security Council. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 18 2026 (IPS)

As the campaign for a new UN secretary-general gathers momentum, will the US exercise the decisive vote — or the veto– in the final selection?

The US has publicly declared its opposition to some of the basic goals in the UN’s socio-economic agenda, including gender empowerment and policies relating to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), while dismissing climate change as “a hoax” and a “giant scam.”

The Trump administration has also downplayed human rights and adherence to international laws—two concepts ingrained in the UN system.

When NASA announced last week that the astronauts who would fly on Artemis III, the next return-to-the-moon mission, the New York Times pointed out the crew consisted of four men and no women, triggering a question from the Times: “Was this part of the push by the Trump administration against DEI policies?”

If the US administration continues to take a hard line against DEI, what are the chances of the US administration supporting a female candidature for the next Secretary-General?

In an interview with the Times last January, President Trump said he does not “need international law” to guide his actions, arguing that only his own “morality” and “mind” will constrain his global powers.

So, what would be the fate of any candidate— male or female—who vociferously advocates these UN goals?

James E. Jennings, President, Conscience International, told Inter Press Service, the reason the United States has been disproportionately influential at the UN since the founding of the organization is because of its global leadership position and its long-term financial support for many of its programs.

However, he said, things have greatly changed in the last two years, with the US Administration abolishing the United States’ massive aid programs and trying to sideline or replace the UN with Republican-branded regressive policies.

“President Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms dovetailed with the ideals of the UN Charter, but Washington’s atavistic regime is determined to dominate the globe, not through equality but intimidation”.

“Such actions will be a disaster for both the UN and the US, whose soft power has been a major contributor to its strength through attraction of immigrants, investment, and generous aid programs. No more”.

It is difficult to reconcile Trump’s policies, Jennings argued, based on fear with those of the UN’s charter and goals of mutual respect among nations. Strong and unified pushback from the majority of UN member states with explicit support for independent, visionary global leadership will advance peace and protect vulnerable people everywhere.

“It is unimaginable that the US under the current MAGA Republican leadership would NOT try to select the next US Secretary-General outright, or if unable to do that would not try to block anyone considered unfit from Mr. Trump’s point of view. Personal leadership qualities and policy beliefs will matter less than whether the next head of the UN body kowtows to the US President”.

That fact alone makes it difficult to select a courageous and principled person. At a time of critical challenges for the world body, installation of UN leadership that would be intimidated by or under the thumb of Washington might well be the death knell for what is indubitably one of history’s grandest and most visionary efforts at peace and prosperity for all, he pointed out.

Meanwhile, come election time, will there be a battle of the vetoes – as it happened in a bygone era?

In 1981, Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania was backed by the Organisation of African Unity, the Non-Aligned Movement and China. But his bid was blocked by a US veto.

In 1996, a second five-year term for Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt was vetoed by the US—even though he received the support of 14 of 15 members in the Security Council.

In 1981, China cast a record 16 vetoes against Kurt Waldheim to prevent a third term, leading to his withdrawal and the selection of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar.

Asked for his perspective, Mandeep Tiwana, Secretary-General, CIVICUS told IPS “The veto power wielded by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council is the most anti-people feature of the UN system. Civil Society groups have for years been calling for its voluntary relinquishment but to little or no avail”.

It is time, he said, for a fundamental reconsideration of the veto power. No process can be considered fair or transparent if any one state, however populous, has the power to block it.”

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and Program Director for Middle Eastern Studies, University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on the politics of the UN, told IPS under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States has blocked the election of candidates for Secretary General, even when they had the support of the fourteen other members of the Security Council.

“Given how Trump has been even more prone to attack the United Nations and bully member states, including ostensible U.S. allies, it is likely that the United States will make it even more difficult this round for the UN to choose its next administrator,” he said.

So far, the list of candidates for the post of Secretary-General include: Michelle Bachelet Jeria (Chile): former President of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés (Ecuador): former President of the UN General Assembly. Rafael Mariano Grossi (Argentina): Current Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Rebeca Grynspan Mayufis (Costa Rica): Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Macky Sall (Senegal): former President of Senegal and Maria Fernandez Espinosa Garces, former President of the UN General Assembly and former Foreign Minister of Ecuador.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Harry Kane ist mit zwei Treffern der Matchwinner des Auftaktsieges der Three Lions. Bei Fans und Experten bleibt aber vor allem sein Einsatz vor dem eigenen Tor hängen.

Fast die Hälfte der jungen Erwachsenen in der Schweiz lebt von der Hand in den Mund, zeigt eine Studie. Hohe Wohnkosten und finanzielle Unsicherheit zwingen 46 Prozent, Lebensentscheidungen wie Heirat oder Weiterbildung zu verschieben. Das Eigenheim ist unerreichbar.

A cemetery at the epicentre of the outbreak is rapidly filling up, however large traditional funerals have been scrapped.

A cemetery at the epicentre of the outbreak is rapidly filling up, however large traditional funerals have been scrapped.

A cemetery at the epicentre of the outbreak is rapidly filling up, however large traditional funerals have been scrapped.

Marizanne Kapp and Annerie Dercksen star as South Africa bounce back from defeat in their opening game, while Pakistan remain winless.

Alvin Junior Mak explains the inspiration behind the stylish suits he designed for DR Congo's World Cup team.

Vozinha's mum has been granted a visa to travel to the US ahead of Cape Verde's next game against Uruguay.

Vozinha's mum has been granted a visa to travel to the US ahead of Cape Verde's next game against Uruguay.

Vozinha's mum has been granted a visa to travel to the US ahead of Cape Verde's next game against Uruguay.

Diezani Alison-Madueke had been accused of receiving bribes from oil tycoons but was found not guilty by a jury at Southwark Crown Court.

A major gap in the peace accords is the lack of measures to ensure justice or accountability for past atrocities. Unless those responsible – including commanders like Makenga – face consequences for their horrific crimes in eastern Congo, impunity will continue to fuel abuse. Credit: Sam Ngenda / Shutterstock.com

By Philippe Bolopion and Clémentine de Montjoye
NEW YORK, Jun 17 2026 (IPS)

“General” Sultani Makenga stood before thousands of newly trained armed group recruits in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in February and offered them a promise. “You are now part of an army that has risen up to liberate the country and to really liberate the people,” declared Makenga, the military leader of the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group.

Behind him, at the Tshanzu training camp, recruits can be seen marching in lockstep, smashing bricks with their bare hands and foreheads, leaping through flaming hoops and chanting in unison as they prepare to fight against Congolese government forces.

Not seen in this video are the M23’s executions, brutal punishment, and inhumane treatment to enforce loyalty and submission. The Tshanzu and nearby Rumangabo training camps should serve as a stark warning about the armed group – and by extension neighboring Rwanda’s role in eastern Congo.

We interviewed more than 100 former detainees who either escaped or were deployed and then surrendered to the Congolese army. Their accounts reveal the horrendous reality for those forcibly recruited. New civilian arrivals undergo an initiation ritual meant to mark their transition into military life

Backed by Rwanda’s logistical, equipment, and troop support, the M23 has captured large swathes of eastern Congo. Its effective control over the M23 makes Rwanda an occupying power, as well as criminally liable for the group’s rampant abuse. After it seized the provincial capitals of North and

South Kivu in early 2025, US President Donald Trump stepped in to revive faltering mediation efforts between Congo and Rwanda, proposing a “peace for minerals” deal to secure US interests in the region’s resource-rich east.

Two peace accords were signed — in June and December — including a ceasefire and economic-integration pact between Congo and Rwanda, which calls for the departure of Rwandan troops from Congo.

Yet Rwanda has continued to play a central role, helping the armed group to fill its ranks. While Rwandan leaders travelled to Washington discussing various peace, security and mineral agreements, M23 forces were forcibly rounding up thousands of captured Congolese soldiers and civilians, including police, civil servants, teachers and students — some as young as 12 — and sending them for training and indoctrination at military camps. The M23 picked up many from their homes, churches, schools and hospitals, summoned them to meetings under false promises of payment, or stopped them on the streets and sent them to the camps.

We interviewed more than 100 former detainees who either escaped or were deployed and then surrendered to the Congolese army. Their accounts reveal the horrendous reality for those forcibly recruited. New civilian arrivals undergo an initiation ritual meant to mark their transition into military life.

“It’s a test of how much suffering you can endure,” said a 25-year-old construction worker grabbed in the eastern city of Goma while buying phone credit in March 2025. “There were 200 of us; 10 died. Two were shot, the others whipped to death. We buried them in a mass grave with around 50 others.”

Life in the camps was marked by routine beatings and killings for minor infractions. Detainees described starvation, drinking from puddles, and licking rainwater from leaves. Some died from exhaustion, dehydration, or hunger.

Former detainees recalled limbs protruding from the ground, as bodies were often buried in shallow graves. At night dogs came to feed on the remains. It’s likely that hundreds of detainees, maybe more, died in the camps throughout 2025.

Those confined to detention cells endured even harsher treatment. Bodies were regularly pulled out of the cells for burial. When detainees were finally released to begin a new training cycle in November, scores collapsed.

Children were not spared. Boys were forced to follow military training, dig roads, cut wood, transport heavy supplies, and fetch water over long distances. Makenga selected some to serve as guards, beating other detainees.

The strategy appears to be designed to cement the control of the M23 and the Alliance Fleuve Congo – the politico-military alliance that includes the M23 – over much of eastern Congo. Rwandan forces were positioned around the camps, ready to shoot anyone who tried to flee. Recruits said they were subjected to ideology sessions, singing songs and criticizing Congo’s leadership.

Chanting in unison, the recruits in Makenga’s video display discipline and power—an army ready for war. Despite the M23’s withdrawal from some areas, and Rwanda’s signing of a peace agreement committing to removing Rwandan troops from the country, there is no indication that the conflict in

Congo is over. The M23’s mass forced recruitment campaign is evidence of a failure to confront the structures that enable such abuses.

The US has sanctioned the Rwandan army and four senior commanders. Other countries, including the European Union and the United Kingdom, should urgently follow suit and review cooperation with Rwanda that risks fueling abusive forces.

In the meantime, the US should make clear to Rwandan President Paul Kagame that causing more suffering of civilians will result in further sanctions.

A major gap in the peace accords is the lack of measures to ensure justice or accountability for past atrocities. Unless those responsible – including commanders like Makenga – face consequences for their horrific crimes in eastern Congo, impunity will continue to fuel abuse.

Philippe Bolopion is the executive director and Clémentine de Montjoye is a senior researcher, both at Human Rights Watch.

 

Neighbours said the stench from the property had become so overwhelming that it was impossible to relax at home.

MEPs warn of continued democratic backsliding in both countries and call for reforms and a stronger EU response.
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Health facilities have come under attack during the current outbreak as a result of misinformation and fear.

John Steenhuisen is one of South Africa's best-known politicians after leading the DA for seven years.

A rare glimpse of a snow leopard prowling through the high-altitude wilderness of Kangchendzonga National Park, captured by a trail camera. Credit: WWF/Sikkim

By Diwash Gahatraj
SIKKIM, India, Jun 17 2026 (IPS)

The tea arrives before the conversation starts. Jayanta Mukhia sets two cups on the wooden table and pulls up a chair across from the couple who arrived that afternoon with trekking poles and rucksacks. They have come to walk the Goechala trail into the heart of Khangchendzonga National Park in India. They will leave in two days. Before they go, she has something to tell them.

Jayanta asks if they know what happens to the garbage they carry in. Some of it comes back out. Some of it does not. In the high pastures above Yuksom, a town in West Sikkim, the trail climbs toward the glaciers, and plastic bags caught in the rocks stay there through winter. Army camps, tourists, and trekking groups – they all leave something behind. That waste feeds dogs that follow the trails running through the same corridors where snow leopards move at night.

Jayanta Mukhia outside the Chungda Hidden Family Homestay in Yuksom, West Sikkim. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

Her husband, Chungda Sherpa, started the Chungda Hidden Family Homestay in Yuksom in 2012, when he was still a trekking guide who knew every switchback on the Goechala route. Today he handles the bookings, the outreach, and the digital presence that brings guests from cities they have never visited. Jayanta runs everything else, the kitchen, the guests, the conversations at the wooden table, and the quiet insistence that every person who sleeps under her roof leaves the park cleaner than they found it.

“The homestay earns between eight and ten lakhs (about USD 8,400 to 10,500) a year. That income exists because the park exists,” she says.

According to Tshering Uden of the Khangchendzonga Conservation Committee, Yuksom has 15 hotels, 25 homestays and more than 21 travel agencies registered under the local Panchayat, all of whose income depends directly on Khangchendzonga’s ecological health. Their collective livelihood runs on the same high-altitude corridors where Sikkim’s 21 snow leopards live.

A hiker admires the view in the Khangchendzonga National Park. Credit: Tshering Uden, KCC.

Guardian of the High-Altitude

Known locally as Saagey, the snow leopard is revered as a sacred guardian of the high-altitude ecosystem in Sikkimese Buddhist tradition, its conservation inseparable from the beliefs and pastoral lifestyles of the communities that share its landscape. Khangchendzonga National Park, inscribed as India’s first mixed natural and cultural UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016, sits at the heart of this landscape.

India’s first national snow leopard population assessment surveyed the Trans-Himalayan region between 2019 and 2023, deploying camera traps at nearly 2,000 locations across about 120,000 square kilometres and counting 718 snow leopards across six Himalayan states and union territories. Sikkim recorded 21, a modest figure in a rugged landscape where the cats share space with herders, trekkers and Dzo transporters. The SECURE Himalaya project, supported by the Global Environment Facility, helped make that count possible by building community-based monitoring capacity across the high mountains, demonstrating that conservation works best when local communities are invested in it.

This is a hyperlocal account of what that investment built in one corner of a much larger effort.

Buddhist stupas covered in flags serve as a spiritual landmark on high-altitude trekking trails, such as those leading to Mount Kanchenjunga. Credit: Tshering Uden, KCC

SECURE Himalaya ran for nearly seven years across four Himalayan states: Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and the Union Territory of Ladakh. In Sikkim, it focused on the Khangchendzonga-Upper Teesta landscape – roughly 4,000 square kilometres from Khangchendzonga National Park down to the upper catchment of the Teesta River. Backed by a GEF grant of USD 11.5 million and over USD 60 million in co-financing from the Government of India, the funding went into four interconnected areas: conserving key biodiversity zones, securing sustainable community livelihoods, reducing human-wildlife conflict, and building knowledge systems for long-term landscape management.

In Sikkim, this translated into camera trap networks, community patrol volunteers, women’s handicraft enterprises, and waste management systems all designed around a single argument: that communities with an economic stake in a healthy landscape will protect it.

The project received a Highly Satisfactory rating from independent evaluators for results, relevance and efficiency. Khangchendzonga National Park recorded one of the largest improvements in management effectiveness across all project sites.

One of the project’s most practical interventions targeted feral dogs, which had become a dominant predator in North Sikkim, chasing snow leopards from their kills and hunting the blue sheep and pika the cats depend on. “The project worked with army establishments in Sikkim to set up biodigester facilities in strategic locations to manage food waste from army camps, which helped directly address the feral dog problem,” says Ruchi Pant, who oversaw SECURE Himalaya’s reporting at UNDP India. “The army subsequently scaled up these biodigesters using their own resources.” The initiative has continued independently, one of several project interventions that continues even though the project’s funding has ended.

Young volunteers were trained as Himal Rakshaks, protectors of the Himalaya, to set camera traps, patrol Khangchendzonga National Park and report sightings. The Sikkim Forest Department has since integrated them into its regular operations, with volunteers supporting fire line management and routine monitoring alongside forest guards. The State Biodiversity Board has constituted 196 Biodiversity Management Committees across Sikkim, many of them women-led, operating under the Biological Diversity Act 2002.

Nedup Bhutia’s dzo loaded with trekking supplies at the Yuksom trailhead, West Sikkim, ready for the Goechala trek into Khangchendzonga National Park. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

In Yuksom, the results were visible in ways the community could measure. The KCC trained trekking guides, porters and tourism operators to monitor trails, manage waste and report wildlife sightings. The project’s midterm review cited its zero-waste management model as a national best practice. In 2022, the programme was formally handed over to the Yuksam Gram Panchayat Unit and now runs under the Block Administrative Centre, according to Tshering Uden — a concrete example of the institutional transition the project was designed to achieve. Blue sheep, rarely seen in the national park before the project, are now a regular presence on the slopes. More blue sheep means a more reliable prey base for snow leopards, and fewer reasons for the cats to come down and take livestock.

“Before the project we only heard about snow leopards in our area,” says Tshering Uden. “Now we have picture evidence.”

Tents in the valley of the Khangchendzonga National Park. The zero-waste aspect of its zero-waste management model, including from visitors to the park, has been cited as a national best practice. Credit: Tshering Uden, KCC

A Shift in Mindset

Udai Gurung of the Sikkim Forest Department says the project changed the department’s fundamental orientation. “The biggest shift was conceptual,” he says. “The forest department moved from a protection-centric model to a landscape-level, coexistence-based approach.”

The project ended in 2024. GEF funding was always designed to be temporary and not a permanent handhold but a spark for something that continues under its own momentum. By that measure, the terminal evaluation rated the project highly satisfactory for results, relevance and efficiency, while assessing sustainability as moderately likely, noting that targets were met in full and, in some instances, exceeded.

The long-term expectation, consistent with how all GEF projects are designed, is that technical capacity and systems developed under the project are handed over to the government to carry forward.

In Sikkim, that transition is underway. Gurung identifies the slow release of funds as the single biggest structural challenge throughout implementation, not a shortage of money, but a bureaucratic delay in releasing funds already allocated. In high-altitude Sikkim, where the working season is a matter of weeks, entire field seasons were lost waiting for approvals. “Capacity exists,” he says, “but long-term sustainability will require consistent financial and institutional support.”

That support now rests primarily with local and state authorities. The Himal Rakshaks operate within the Sikkim Forest Department. The BMCs sit under the State Biodiversity Board. The zero-waste programme runs under the Yuksam Block Administrative Centre.

Jayanta Mukhia outside the Chungda Hidden Family Homestay in Yuksom, West Sikkim. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

Women in North Sikkim continue weaving nettle fibre and accessing premium markets independently.

In May 2023, Sikkim announced its first biodiversity heritage site – Tunkyong Dho – a sacred lake in Dzongu supported by the local biodiversity management committee. UNDP remains involved at a smaller scale through the German IKI ICCA programme, a portion of which continues to support the Himalayan landscape.

The most concrete unfinished work is the compensation system for herders. Pema Yangden Lepcha, a researcher and project associate at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment’s Himalaya Initiative in Gangtok, has spent months talking to yak herders in North Sikkim.

Herders there recently told her they had lost five yaks to snow leopard predation. An adult yak costs between 80,000 and 100,000 rupees. Government compensation is a fraction of that, and most predation happens on Forest Department land where herders are often told the department cannot help.

“They have a very negative attitude toward snow leopards,” Pema says, “and often feel a strong urge to retaliate.” Closing that gap so that herders who bear the cost of coexistence are fairly compensated is the single most urgent task for the local authorities now responsible for this landscape.

Nedup Bhutia’s dzo loaded with trekking supplies at the Yuksom trailhead, West Sikkim, ready for the Goechala trek into Khangchendzonga National Park. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

Carrying it Forward

On the trail, Nedup Bhutia has walked the Goechala route for twenty years with his eleven dzo. He earns between one and one and a half lakhs each trekking season, porting visitors into the park. He has never seen a snow leopard. But three years ago, a two-year-old ox was found dead in the open in Jhamtong village on the park’s periphery, killed by a snow leopard overnight. For Nedup, it is proof of a landscape still alive.

In Yuksom, at the wooden table in Chungda Hidden Family Homestay, Jayanta Mukhia is refilling two cups of tea. Her guests leave tomorrow. They will carry their garbage out. She has made sure of it.

The 21 snow leopards are still there. The communities are still working. The project succeeded by every measure the evaluators applied. What happens next depends not on outside funding but on whether the institutions and communities that inherited this work choose to build on it. That is where the responsibility now sits and where the real test of SECURE Himalaya’s legacy begins.

Note: This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.
IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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