At UN, US Opposes United Nations Commitment to Broaden Women’s Peace & Diplomacy

In the first U.N. conference since the election, the U.S. tries to check the U.N.’s bid to advance the role of women in peacemaking, potentially dampening prospects for a woman secretary-general.

By Colum Lynch // 07 March 2025

For champions of women’s rights, 2025 was hoped to be the year that the elusive goal of electing the first female United Nations secretary-general gained traction. But the prospect has been dealt a blow by the election of U.S. President Donald Trump and his global war on diversity.

In closed-door negotiations on a political declaration for the Commission on the Status of Women, or CSW, the U.S. joined forces with Russia, Argentina, and other conservative states to strike language promoting efforts to achieve gender parity at the U.N. In particular, Washington has proposed weakening or ditching provisions that encourage states and U.N. entities to expand the role of women in peacekeeping and diplomacy and to select a woman for the top U.N. job.

“Candidates should not be selected based on sex but only if qualified,” said a U.S. official, urging delegates to water down language encouraging member states to nominate female candidates for the top U.N. job, according to notes of the confidential proceedings. Russia, which has aligned increasingly with the U.S., asked that the provision on the race for U.N. leader be stripped out altogether. The U.S. and Russia are veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council and have the power to block the appointment of any U.N. secretary-general.

The U.S. campaign to eliminate diversity measures is part of a much broader effort to rewrite the rules of the international system that the U.S. helped create after World War II, but which Trump’s followers contend has evolved into an ideological fortress of foreign liberal values. The women’s commission — the first major U.N. conference since Trump’s election — has provided an opportunity to hit back at a range of commitments — from the reduction of greenhouse emissions to the advancement of sexual and reproductive rights and the promotion of development goals aimed at ending poverty and global inequality.

“The Trump administration is projecting a lot of its domestic agenda onto the UN,” Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the International Crisis Group, told Devex in an email exchange. “It clearly sees the UN as an extension of the liberal establishment it wants to dismantle in Washington, and it is not entirely wrong.”

Ever since the Cold War, Gowan added, “the UN has embraced a set of liberal and progressive causes that Republican administrations have always viewed skeptically. The first Trump administration struck some pretty regressive stances on issues like gender and climate change at the UN. The new team is doubling down on that.”

A wake-up call

The diplomatic standoff is unfolding on the eve of the 30-year anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a landmark agreement devoted to advancing the rights and equality of women. Every five years, governments from around the world gather to adopt a political declaration describing achievements and promoting further progress.

U.S. negotiators also seek to remove references to disinformation, gender, and international law in the U.N. peacekeeping agreement.

For progressives, the declaration provides an opportunity to strengthen social and labor protections for women and to advance the scope of rights, granting them greater equality and ability to control their reproductive choices. For conservatives, the process has become a vehicle for advancing a radical progressive social ideology, from the promotion of abortion to the normalization of LGBTQI lifestyles.

“It’s a wake up call for us as feminists and for us as human rights defenders,” Ishaan Shah, of the Young Feminist Caucus, who has been closely tracking the negotiations, wrote in a text message. “We knew this was coming; it’s just that seeing it play out is devastating. If you look at how much has been done [to roll back agreements on women’s rights] in the first few months of this year, it’s a signal that we need to push forward stronger over the next four years to ensure we don’t roll back hard won and fought progress.

“Women have broken barriers, shattered ceilings and reshaped societies. Yet these hard-fought gains remain fragile,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Friday at an International Women’s Day event.

“As we see in every corner of the world, from pushback to rollback, women’s rights are under attack,” he added. “Instead of mainstreaming equal rights, we are witnessing the mainstreaming of chauvinism and misogyny. We cannot stand by as progress is reversed.”

Been there, done that

Susana Malcorra, a former Argentine foreign minister and top U.N. official, said women have made important advances in the international system, including at the U.N., but that women still struggle to attain the most senior jobs, noting only four women have led the U.N. General Assembly in 79 years, and there has never been a woman secretary-general. Women account for only about 7% of the more than 2,800 top ambassadors, known as permanent representatives, appointed since the U.N.’s founding 80 years ago, she said, citing figures from an upcoming report by GWL Voices, the nonprofit Malcorra co-founded and leads. U.N. Women estimated that only 8% of permanent representatives in the U.N. Security Council between 1990 and 2022 were women.

Malcorra, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the top U.N. job in 2016, told Devex that she does not believe that Trump — who has appointed three women to lead the U.S. mission to the U.N. — would object to a female secretary-general. She is confident that there are plenty of potential female candidates who can credibly make the case that they would be the best person for the job.

“Women are, in general, much better stewards of resources than men. And that is a central piece of concern that the administration has,” she said. “Women manage risk better than men. Women tend to listen more. Women tend to build bridges better. I don’t see anything that is being said by the administration that leads me to the conclusion that they are precluding women from becoming candidate to secretary general.”

Asked if she is personally considering another run for the job, she said: “No, I’m not planning to run. Been there, done it. That’s it.”

No International Day of Hope

The CSW is comprised of 45 member states, elected by representatives of the U.N. Economic and Social Council on the basis of geographical distribution. The commission is chaired by Saudi Arabia, a controversial post given the Gulf States’ poor record on women’s rights. Cabo Verde and Costa Rica are facilitating the negotiations on the final declaration.

In an effort to stall progress on the Beijing platform, the U.S. has pressed delegations to remove language calling for its “full, effective and accelerated implementation,” on the grounds it could be interpreted to suggest commitments beyond what was agreed in Beijing.

The Trump administration, which is not a member of the commission but participates in the negotiations, is unlikely to have all its amendments taken on board, raising concerns that it may seek to torpedo the process through a proxy, like Argentina, which is aligned with the U.S. on most issues.

The negotiations are playing out against a background of a White House push to crack down on liberal orthodoxy on the global stage. In the weeks since Trump issued an executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives in federal agencies, U.S. diplomats have pushed back on the promotion of diversity initiatives at UNICEF and the World Food Programme, while opposing a broader range of progressive initiatives in multiple sessions in the U.N. General Assembly. Those include casting a no vote on resolutions aimed at countering misinformation and disinformation and a pair of resolutions observing an International Day of Hope and an International Day of Judicial Well-Being.

Edward Heartney, the U.S. minister counselor to the U.N. Economic and Social Commission, argued that the phrase “misinformation and disinformation” has been misused to curtail free speech, and that resolution on hope “contributes to the unnecessary proliferation of multiple international days,” which includes international days on happiness, peace and living together in peace.

Heartney signaled U.S. opposition to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, the cornerstone of U.N. efforts to end poverty, reduce inequality, and meet a series of other social, health, and environmental targets by the year 2030.

“Put simply, globalist endeavors like Agenda 2030 and the SDGs lost at the ballot box,” he said Tuesday. “Therefore the United States rejects and denounces the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals, and it will no longer reaffirm them as a matter of course.”

Poking globalism in the eye 

For weeks, delegates from around the world have been haggling over language in the final declaration in a U.N. basement conference room. The U.S. delegation has continued to hammer away at a jumble of words and phrases that have been included in U.N. agreements for years or even decades, but which they see as code for radical leftist social engineering programs: gender, sexual and reproductive health and rights, inclusive, LGBQTI. They want to introduce more language underscoring the essential role of the traditional nuclear family, headed by a woman and man.

U.S. delegates appeared especially put off by what they see as overly progressive jargon, including words like feminization, patriarchy, and the phrase multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, a scholarly phrase that asserts that marginalized groups are subject to various and overlapping forms of discrimination. “This term is a great example of what pres trump is concerned about International Organisations in general and why they need to focus on their core missions,” according to a note of the meeting.

In some fundamental sense, the strategy Washington is pursuing appears intentionally designed to elicit confrontation. “The whole point is to poke the supposed forces of globalism in the eye,” Gowan said. “The U.S. is going out of its way to show that it will not be bound by what the bulk of nations think about issues like development.”

On Friday, the U.S. took another poke at the process, blocking agreement on a seventh compromise draft declaration, insisting on the removal of at least two provisions, including one promoting a “gender responsive” approach to women’s rights, and ensuring the negotiations go down to the wire.

“I suspect that a lot of UN member states will initially treat the U.S. like an errant child, but if it becomes clear that Washington is going to dump past commitments on things like development and climate change, there will be growing blowback from the Global South,” he added.

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Scoop: US pokes globalism in eye in women’s rights talks at UN | Devex