Melania Trump chairs UN meeting on children in conflict

2026-03-02 - 22:34

US first lady Melania Trump presides over a UN Security Council meeting in New York. (EPA Images pic) UNITED NATIONS: US first lady Melania Trump chaired a meeting of the UN Security Council on children and education in conflict on Monday, two days after US President Donald Trump and Israel launched attacks on Iran that prompted a UN warning about child safety. It was the first time a spouse of any serving world leader has chaired a meeting of the 15-member Security Council, the UN body charged with maintaining international peace and security. The plan was announced last week before the launch of the US and Israeli strikes. It comes after the US took over the monthly rotating presidency of the council and was another sign of how Trump has personalised US foreign policy by involving friends and family in major issues. Melania Trump’s office said her aim was to emphasise education as a way to advance tolerance and world peace in the meeting, titled “Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict”. In a statement to the council, she said, “The US stands with all of the children throughout the world. I hope soon peace will be yours.” Iran has blamed Israel and the US for a strike on a girls’ primary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab on Saturday that its UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani said had killed 165 schoolgirls. Reuters could not independently confirm the reports. Iravani said it was “deeply shameful and hypocritical” that the US should convene a meeting on protecting children in armed conflict “while at the same time launching missile strikes against Iranian cities and bombing schools and killing children”. On Saturday, the UN children’s agency, Unicef, issued a statement noting the Iranian reports and saying the military escalation in the Middle East “marks a dangerous moment for millions of children in the region” and echoing a call by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres for an immediate cessation of hostilities. US secretary of state Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that “the US will not deliberately target a school.” Israel’s UN ambassador said he had seen different reports, including that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted the school, but that Israel regretted the loss of life of any civilian. Without specifically mentioning the Iranian allegations, China’s UN ambassador, Fu Cong, said at the UN Security Council meeting on Monday that attacks on schools were one of the grave violations against children identified by the UN and that the international community should respond to such incidents with robust investigations and accountability efforts. President Trump has been a vocal critic of the UN since his first White House term, saying the 193-member world body was ineffective and needed reforms. The US is billions of dollars behind in its contributions to the UN budget and the amount has grown substantially under Trump. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said last week that Melania Trump’s plan to chair the meeting showed “the importance that the US feels towards the Security Council and the subject at hand”, referring to the meeting’s agenda. President Trump struck a more conciliatory tone toward the UN last month at the first meeting of his Board of Peace, an initiative he said aims to resolve conflicts globally but one that many world leaders worry was designed to replace the UN. The first lady has stayed out of the public eye for much of Trump’s presidencies but has been an advocate for children’s causes in the past, including by writing a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2025 calling for the return of Ukrainian children taken to Russia during the war.