UN Under 'Heavy Pressure' Politically, Financially Says UNGA President

United Nations General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock discusses the political and financial facing the United Nations and the global commitments necessary to secure its future, as world leaders prepare to address the assembly next week.

The Senate confirmed Mike Waltz as US ambassador to the United Nations, giving the former national security adviser a new home months after he was booted from President Donald Trump’s inner circle after inadvertently adding a journalist to a sensitive Signal group chat. 
Waltz was confirmed by a vote of 47 to 43, ensuring Trump will have a confirmed envoy in place for the UN General Assembly’s annual debate, which kicks off on Sept. 23. While the president has slashed funding to many of its programs, an empty ambassador’s chair during UNGA would have amounted to a symbolic own-goal.
At his confirmation hearing in July, Waltz said he wanted to return the UN’s focus to preventing and resolving disputes. He also vowed to challenge China’s growing influence at the organization. 
That tracks with sentiments expressed by Trump’s State Department. In a statement Friday, department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the UN needs to “get back to basics, reorienting the organization to its origins as an effective tool for advancing peace, not a bloated bureaucracy that compromises national sovereignty and pushes destructive ideologies like DEI.”
Those US priorities have been undermined by the lack of a confirmed ambassador as well as Trump’s decision to deny hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to UN peacekeeping and pull the US from the UN Human Rights Council and UNESCO.
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