Hi, this is Paula in New York. While many in Geneva fret about how UN reform proposals unfold after the secretary general's latest report dropped, diplomats meeting at UNGA are focussed on other global business.

As internet connection in the press tent became spotty on Tuesday, news broke that the US secret service seized an illegal network in the city capable of taking down communications during the global gathering. And the WHO contests the US government's claim linking Tylenol to autism.

Paula Dupraz-Dobias

24.09.2025

On our radar

Photo article

Diplomats attending a commemoration for the 80th anniversary of the United Nations, as the General Assembly begins its high-level week, on Monday 22 September 2025. (Geneva Solutions/Paula Dupraz-Dobias)

Out of sight, out of mind: At UN New York meet, diplomats shy away from reform talk. Delegations are mulling over the UN’s recent reform proposals as leaders gather in New York at a historic, albeit existential moment for the organisation.

Geneva Solutions

🗽Straight from New York

🕵🏻‍♂️I spy 100 leaders. According to The New York Times, the US Secret Service said it seized last month an illegal network of over 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers in the New York region, with the power to bring down the whole cellular network, as heads of state huddle for the UN big gathering.

The network, now dismantled, could be part of a foreign nation’s surveillance operation, experts suspect, a reminder that the attractiveness of the high-level event is not necessarily politics.

🚕Stuck in traffic. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, got a taste of life in the Big Apple when police briefly blocked him at a sidewalk for the US president’s motorcade. He jokingly called out to Trump to complain – but to little avail, as he reportedly still had to continue on foot.

Here’s what else is happening

🌐Nicaragua's Ortega extends transnational persecution of critics, UN rights experts say. A report presented at the Human Rights Council on Tuesday documents a wide range of methods used, including digital surveillance, issuing false red notices with Interpol and stripping at least 452 people of their nationality.
Reuters (EN)
💊WHO says evidence ‘inconsistent’ of link between autism and paracetamol use in pregnancy. US president Donald Trump made unproven claims on Monday, tying autism to childhood vaccines and pain medication Tylenol taken by pregnant women, drawing rebuttals also by the EU and the UK health authorities.
Reuters (EN)
🗳️Opinion: It's time for majority voting at UN climate summits. Consensus has become a tool of obstruction. We need a model that actually gives climate justice a chance to prevail, writes Greenpeace International’s executive director, Mads Christensen.
Climate Home News (EN)
🪨How US aid cutbacks hindered Afghanistan’s earthquake response. Aid officials describe the very real impact the retreat in funding has had on delivering assistance to hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors.
The New Humanitarian (EN)

What they think

❝The World Court deemed climate inaction a human rights violation. We must build on that. The International Court of Justice’s landmark opinion affirming that the climate crisis amounts to a human rights violation owes a great deal to years of human rights work in Geneva. As the Human Rights Council convenes, that work isn’t over, write Upasana Khatri and Francesca Mingrone, senior attorneys at the Center for International Environmental Law.

(EN)

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