Sunday Times 2
Can Trump evict the UN?
View(s):- When PLO Leader Arafat was shut-out, the UN General Assembly moved out
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – When President Trump first addressed the UN General Assembly back in September 2017—just after he restricted or banned nationals from several countries in Africa and the Middle East—he looked at all the foreign delegates from 192 countries seated in the chamber and remarked, How the hell did you guys get into this country?
That remark was a joke widely circulated in the delegate’s lounge, the UN’s watering hole, the source of most political jokes and anecdotes.
Trump’s 2017 White House Executive Order initially imposed a travel ban and visa restrictions on nationals from 15 mostly “Muslim majority” countries, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and later extended the ban to North Korea, Chad, Eritrea, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Tanzania and Venezuela, barring them from entering the US.
But diplomats and UN staffers are expected to be exempted from these restrictions. However, in reality, are they?
Fast forward to 2025.
A new memo from the White House last week reportedly lists a total of more than 40 countries, subject to visa restrictions, divided into three separate groups. The first group of 10 countries, which includes Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea, among others, would be set for a full visa suspension.
In the second group of five countries—Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar and South Sudan—would face partial suspensions that would affect tourist and student visas as well as other immigrant visas, with some exceptions.
In the third group, a total of 26 countries, including Belarus, Pakistan and Turkmenistan, among others, would be considered for a partial suspension of US visa issuance if their governments “do not make efforts to address deficiencies within 60 days”, the memo said.
When the United Nations decided to locate its secretariat in the city of New York, the United States, as host nation, signed a “headquarters agreement” in 1947, not only ensuring diplomatic immunity to foreign diplomats but also pledging to facilitate the day-to-day activities of member states without any hindrance. But there were several instances of open violation of that agreement.
When Yasser Arafat 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 policymaking body to Geneva—perhaps for the first time in UN history—providing a less-hostile political environment for the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
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 honourable Assembly, since 1974, would take place in the hospitable city of Geneva.”
On his 1974 visit, he avoided the hundreds of pro- and anti-Arafat demonstrators outside the UN building by arriving in a helicopter which landed on the North Lawn of the UN campus adjoining the East River. When he addressed the General Assembly, there were confusing reports whether or not Arafat carried a gun in his holster—“in a house of ”peace”—which was apparently not visible to delegates.
One news story said Arafat was seen “wearing his gun belt and holster and reluctantly removing his pistol before mounting the rostrum.” “Today, I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand,” he told the Assembly. But there were some delegates who denied Arafat carried a weapon.
Since Arafat, several political leaders—mostly antagonistic towards the US or heading regimes under American sanctions—have either been denied visas or implicitly declared persona non grata (PNG).
As a result, heads of state from the so-called “rogue nations”, including North Korea’s Kim Il Sung, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Syria’s Hafez al-Assad, never addressed the UN—and perhaps never tried for a US visa either, which may have been refused.
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 the question that remained unanswered was: Does the United States have a moral right to implicitly act on an ICC ruling when Washington is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the ICC?
The United States, which is legally obliged to respect international diplomatic norms as host country to the United Nations, has also been accused of imposing unfair travel restrictions on U.N. diplomats already 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.
Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, addresses the UN General Assembly in September 2017. UN Photo/Cia Pak
Pleading national security concerns, Washington has long placed tight restrictions 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 have to obtain permission from the State Department to travel outside a 25-mile radius from New York City.
According to Section 17 of the Headquarters Agreement, “American authorities” were expected to “supply on equitable terms with the necessary public services”, including telephone and telegraph facilities, to the United Nations and its member states.
“In case of any interruption or threatened interruption of any such services, the appropriate American authorities will consider the needs of the United Nations as being of equal importance with similar needs of essential agencies of the government of the United States and will take steps accordingly to ensure that the work of the United Nations is not prejudiced.”
Meanwhile, the US has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), while it has warned that two other UN organisations “deserve renewed scrutiny” – the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Will the US eventually abrogate the Headquarters Agreement or pull out of the UN—judging by Trump’s unpredictable political shenanigans?
In an article in the Wall Street Journal last week, Eugene Kontorovich, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a professor at George Mason University School of Law, points out the U.S. offered to host the newly created U.N. after World War II amid a wave of optimism about the organisation’s ability to prevent future wars.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the land, and the headquarters was given an interstate-free loan from Washington that would be worth billions today.
The United Nations shall not be moved unless the headquarters district ceases to be used for that purpose, the agreement says. Some U.N. officials have taken this to mean the U.N. can’t be evicted.
“But the agreement is a treaty, and the default rule of international law is that treaties, unless they say otherwise, last as long as the parties wish. If the U.S. cancels the treaty, the entire arrangement disappears; nothing in the treaty’s text prohibits withdrawal. Indeed, had an irrevocable agreement been intended, (the US) Congress, which is needed to approve treaties, would not have allowed the agreement to pass without making it explicit.”
While the treaty refers to the “permanent” headquarters of the U.N., this simply means “durable”. Many international treaties use “permanent” in this way, to mean long-lasting, not eternal. The Permanent International Court of Justice lasted from 1922 to 1946.
Trump should reopen the 1947 agreement locating its headquarters. It was a terrible real-estate deal, declared Kontorovich.
But will he?