President Donald Trump holds an executive order regarding withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council in the White House’s oval office, February 4 2025. (Keystone/AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Absent US looms large over Human Rights Council. Washington is snubbing the UN’s top rights body, which is convening this month in Geneva. But its actions will still shape key issues on the agenda.

Is IOM doing Trump’s dirty bidding in Guantánamo? An NGO has raised concerns about the International Organization for Migration’s presence at the Guantánamo Bay base in Cuba, where the Trump administration plans to detain thousands of migrants. The Geneva-based organisation has declined to comment.

🌍CLIMATE MEET. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meets this week in China, where it will decide on its future reporting plans. Methodologies for the assessment of adaptation and mitigation policies, as well as the UN office’s budget will be on the plenary’s agenda.

US disappearing act. After the US announced its exit from the Paris agreement, it was no surprise when Reuters news agency reported that the Trump administration was stopping the participation of US scientists in the expert climate panel.

A US official who asked to remain anonymous told us that the US Global Change Research Program, which sent scientists to participate in the IPCC and is now affected by the stop-work order, has played an “extremely important” role in coordinating climate analysis and policy within government agencies.

Wider repercussions. The latest Trump withdrawal from international climate processes may further aggravate what experts see as an undoing of scientific cooperation on climate set in motion by earlier administration decisions, as we recently reported.

🇺🇦UKRAINE ANNIVERSARY. As a superpower war of words attempts to derail facts regarding the start of the latest flare-up of Ukraine’s conflict, aid organisations meanwhile are urging donors to continue to fund humanitarian needs in the country.

Plea for billions. Three years after the beginning of the full-scale invasion by Russia, UN agencies have said $2.6 billion is needed to sustain six million Ukrainians in need of assistance, including along the frontlines and for internally displaced people.

Amid sharp cuts in donor funding, Matthias Schmale, resident and humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine said Friday at a press briefing that he hoped US funding, which represented 30 per cent of humanitarian spending, “would still be part of the equation”.

– By Paula Dupraz-Dobias

❝Hurricane Trump is about to shatter the human rights house – states can save it. A storm is about to hit the international human rights system, already weakened by years of neglect. For Phil Lynch, executive director of the International Service for Human Rights, we do not have to accept this and head into a lawless future, but the only way forward is for responsible actors to pull their own weight and invest in human rights.