The preambular words of the UN Charter displayed at the United Nations Headquarters, in New York. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 18 2025 – When the 193-member General Assembly commemorates the UN’s 80th anniversary during a high-level meeting in mid-September, how many political leaders and delegates will be barred from entering the United States –despite the 1947 US-UN Host Country Agreement?
US President Donald Trump last June issued a Proclamation titled Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.
This White House proclamation –a virtual black List –restricts travel into the U.S. by nationals from 19 countries who will be refused US visas.
The list includes Afghanistan, Myanmar, Burundi, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen. In addition, Egypt is under review.
But will this result in barring political leaders and UN delegates?
Any denial of visas will be a violation of Sections 11-14 of the Host Country agreement which ensures “that representatives of member states, UN officials, and others with legitimate business can access the headquarters district without significant impediments.”
But the agreement also stipulates the US will facilitate the issuance of visas for those with UN-related travel needs.
That Agreement, along with the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, outlines the legal framework for the UN’s presence and operations in the US. It covers aspects like the privileges and immunities of UN representatives, officials, and their families, as well as the handling of disputes and other practical matters.
So far, the US has imposed sanctions on UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory Francesca Albanese because of her critical report on Israel.
Reacting to the announcement, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters last month the imposition of sanctions on UN Special Rapporteurs sets a “dangerous precedent.”
“The use of unilateral sanctions against Special Rapporteurs or any other UN expert or official is unacceptable,” he told journalists.
He also highlighted the independent mandate and role of the Special Rapporteurs, noting that Member States “are perfectly entitled to their views and to disagree with” the experts’ reports.
“But we encourage them to engage with the UN’s human rights architecture,” he added.
Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, urged the US to reverse the sanctions and said that the attacks and threats against Albanese and other Human Rights Council mandate-holders “must stop.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. has also imposed sanctions on officials of the Palestinian Authority and members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) accusing them of undermining peace efforts with Israel —even as other Western powers moved toward recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Judging by the Trump administration’s track record, and its violations of federal rules and legislation, will the US adhere to the Host Country agreement or ignore it?
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), told IPS “knowing Trump’s track record, he will find any way to tamper with any system or law just so that people will talk about it—good, bad, or in between, as long as he is front and center of what’s happening around him.”
He doesn’t only want to assert authoritarian governance here in the United States; he is also trying to project himself as the leader of the whole world, wanting foreign leaders to bow to him, said Dr Ben-Meir.
“Many of his actions, including his deeply misguided tariffs, are his attempt to use his power to show that he is above all other leaders in the world. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to create problems for the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting in September.”
Most likely, he will block any UNSC resolution critical of Israel and any resolution recognizing a Palestinian state.
Dr Ben-Meir also pointed out that Trump’s executive order, while reviving accusations of xenophobia and isolationism, provides exceptions for those traveling on diplomatic visas, which is intended for those traveling to and from the United Nations Headquarters District.
“Unless there is some sort of extraordinary interference from Trump, his travel ban on 19 countries should not impact those nations’ diplomats traveling to the United States for the General Assembly, or other United Nations business,” he pointed out.
Mandeep S. Tiwana, Secretary General, CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations (CSOs), told IPS the United States derives immense economic and political benefits from hosting the UN headquarters in New York. It would be highly unwise to restrict the entry of foreign government and civil society representatives to attend UN sessions and participate in UN related meetings.
“The United States Government has a legal responsibility to facilitate their entry to support the UN’s mission to secure peace, justice and sustainability in the world,” he said.
Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy and national director, RootsAction.org, told IPS contempt for the United Nations is nothing new coming from Washington, although it has varied in extent and candor over the decades.
“While U.S. administrations have always sought to bend the world body to its nationalistic will, some U.S. presidents have participated in the UN with an extent of good faith”.
The current Trump administration, he pointed out, is at the opposite end of the spectrum, making no effort to conceal its utter contempt for the precepts of the UN and making no effort to do anything but undermine it.
“Barring diplomats from entering the United States to participate in UN proceedings is beyond the pale – an expression of extreme arrogance that violates not only the basic principles of the UN but also conveys the global aspirations of U.S. foreign policy. The de facto approach is “Do as we say, not as we do.”
There is much to condemn in the human rights records of many of the governments that the Trump regime seeks to bar from entrance to the United States, he argued. At the same time, a country notably absent from the list is Israel, which is waging a genocidal war on Palestinian people made possible by massive nonstop arms shipments from the USA.
While the U.S. exercises veto power and leverage within the Security Council, the General Assembly is a venue where justified distrust and anger toward the United States can only grow, given the policies of the U.S government, declared Solomon, author, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.”
Meanwhile, the United States has, in the past. been accused of imposing unfair travel restrictions on U.N. diplomats in the country.
Back in August 2000, the Russian Federation, Iraq and Cuba protested the “discriminatory” treatment, which they say targets countries that displease the U.S.
Pleading national security concerns, Washington has long placed tight restrictions, in a bygone era, on diplomats from several “unfriendly” nations, including those deemed “terrorist states,” particularly Cuba, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Libya.
U.N. diplomats from these countries, posted in New York, also have to obtain permission from the U.S. State Department to travel outside a 25-mile radius from New York City.
When former Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accused of war crimes, was refused a US visa to attend the high-level segment of the General Assembly sessions in September 2013, Hassan Ali, a senior Sudanese diplomat, registered a strong protest with the UN’s Legal Committee.
“The democratically-elected president of Sudan had been deprived of the opportunity to participate in the General Assembly because the host country, the United States, had denied him a visa, in violation of the U.N.-U.S. Headquarters Agreement. It was a great and deliberate violation of the Headquarters Agreement,” he said.
The refusal of a visa for the Sudanese president was also a political landmine because al-Bashir had been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
But one question remained unanswered: Does the United States have a right to implicitly act on an ICC ruling when Washington is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the ICC?
When Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was denied a US visa to visit New York to address the United Nations back in 1988, the General Assembly defied the United States by temporarily moving the UN’s highest policy making body to Geneva-– perhaps for the first time in UN history–- providing a less-hostile political environment for the PLO leader.
Arafat, who first addressed the UN in 1974, took a swipe at Washington when he prefaced his statement by saying “it never occurred to me that my second meeting with this honorable Assembly, since 1974, would take place in the hospitable city of Geneva”.
This article contains excerpts from a book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That,” available on Amazon. The book is authored by Thalif Deen, Senior Editor at the UN Bureau of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, who is also an ex-UN staffer and a former member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the General Assembly sessions. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/
IPS UN Bureau Report
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