The US-Russia-Iran Alliance at the UN

Opposing DEI makes for strange bedfellows

Photo by Mathias Reding on Unsplash\

It is hard to get more in the weeds at the United Nations than a discussion of how NGOs get credentialed—that is, how specific NGOs secure grounds passes for their staff to attend meetings at UN headquarters or even just eat in the cafeteria. But bear with me, because the process of granting credentials to NGOs reveals a broader story about shifting alliances at the United Nations under the second Trump administration, with implications for a larger geopolitical realignment.

One of the UN’s main organs is the Economic and Social Council, or ECOSOC. It has its own chamber at UN headquarters in New York, situated near the Security Council and General Assembly halls. Each of the 193 UN member states is also a member of ECOSOC, which broadly oversees the UN’s work in economic development, human rights, and the environment.

Under ECOSOC’s purview are various committees composed of smaller groups of countries that oversee specific aspects of this work. One of these is the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, which decides which NGOs can obtain UN credentials. This 19-member committee, including the United States, elects members to two-year terms. NGOs submit applications for credentials, and the committee determines their merits. Currently, over 6,000 NGOs hold UN status—everyone from AARP to Oxfam International.

This committee often becomes a battleground when certain countries attempt to block NGOs for transparently political reasons. When I began covering the UN during the George W. Bush administration, for example, the U.S. routinely sought to block NGOs that supported LGBTQ rights. At the time, the Bush administration was adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage, one of the defining political and cultural debates in the U.S., so it worked to prevent human rights NGOs advocating for LGBTQ rights from gaining UN credentials. The U.S. allied with Russia and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which includes Iran, to form a conservative bloc against these NGOs—and often succeeded.

When the Obama administration took office, it immediately lifted U.S. objections to LGBTQ rights NGOs, allowing many to obtain the credentials they had long been denied. The first Trump administration, by contrast, was not particularly active in the NGO Committee—by then, gay rights had become a less politically divisive issue, and the administration showed little interest in using the UN as a platform for a broader culture war.

The same cannot be said for Trump 2.0.

In just a few short weeks, Trump’s war on DEI and gender equality has gone global, with the United Nations emerging as a key battleground. There is now mounting evidence that opposing DEI and gender equality has become a prime directive that is shaping nearly all aspects of American engagement at the UN.

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