The US and the UN: Targeting Visa Denials for Greatest Effect

The United Nations headquarters stands in New York City on Sept. 9, 2025. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Commentary

The United States is dusting off its ability to deny visas to adversarial foreign officials who seek to visit the United Nations. The two most recent examples are the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro.

In addition, the United States denied visas to 80 junior Palestinian officials. All sought to attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, which lasted from Sept. 9 to Sept. 29. The United States denied Abbas a visa over his alleged enabling of terrorism. Petro’s visa was canceled after he called on U.S. soldiers to disobey the orders of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Colombia Case

Petro is an ally of Venezuela’s Maduro regime and a frequent critic of the United States. He objects to the repatriation of illegal aliens and the U.S. military’s targeting of drug trafficking boats, despite tens of thousands of Americans having died from illegal drug overdoses annually in recent years. Petro’s visa denial did not affect his trip to New York City to speak at the U.N., because he is an EU citizen and therefore does not require a visa to visit the United States. But it sent a strong signal nonetheless.

Petro called his visa denial a violation of the “founding principles” of the U.N. The treaty that the United States signed to get the U.N. headquarters located in New York requires that the United States give foreign dignitaries free access to U.N. premises. Congress voted the treaty into U.S. law but included a national security exception.

The Trump administration argued that both visa denials were consistent with U.S. national security needs, which provided the denials with legal justification.

The Palestinian Case

Abbas leads both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO was founded in 1964 and conducted numerous terror attacks on civilians in Israel and abroad. Yet in 1974, the U.N. General Assembly granted the PLO observer status as representative of the Palestinian people. Four years later, the PLO opened an office in Washington under U.S. President Jimmy Carter. This was controversial, and in 1987, the U.S. Congress passed a law that designated the PLO as a terrorist organization. In 1993, the PLO finally recognized Israel’s right to exist and renounced terrorism.

However, Abbas continues to wear a key lapel pin that symbolizes the Palestinian “right to return” to Israel of 700,000 Palestinians and their descendants who fled in 1948. Few speak of compensating the approximately 900,000 Jewish people who fled Arab countries for Israel at about the same time. The return of millions of Palestinians into Israel would lead to their outvoting Jewish citizens in the world’s only Jewish-majority state.

Muslims have dozens of countries around the world, and Israel argues that Palestinian refugees and their descendants should be given citizenship where they live now. The refusal of many Arab countries to provide such citizenship to their Palestinian residents aggravates the Palestinian–Israeli dispute.

The U.S. State Department argued in a statement that to be accepted as a partner for peace, Abbas and his groups “must consistently repudiate terrorism, and end incitement to terrorism in education, as required by U.S. law and as promised by the PLO.”

The department further argued that the PA is engaged in lawfare and seeks unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.

“Both steps materially contributed to Hamas’s refusal to release its hostages, and to the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire talks,” the statement reads.

How UN Visa Denials Can Weaken Authoritarianism

Whether or not one agrees with the specific cases of Petro and Abbas, their visa denials do set a precedent for getting tougher on authoritarian leaders around the world.

The U.S. government could deny visas to other officials who are arguably even greater threats to U.S. national security. The most obvious cases would be officials from places like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela (what could be called the CRINK-plus countries). Regimes in these countries attack their own citizens in contravention of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), invade their neighbors, support terrorism, or facilitate the international illicit drug trade.

Visa restrictions on foreign officials visiting the U.N. have caused international controversy. If taken far enough, they could increase support for proposals to relocate the U.N. headquarters to another city, such as Brussels, Beijing, or, as Petro proposed, Qatar. A member of the European Parliament from Denmark proposed that one U.N. meeting related to Palestinian statehood be moved from New York to Geneva. This would give Europe, China, or Qatar greater diplomatic influence and access.

The United States is in a good position to selectively deny visas to foreign officials from authoritarian countries who seek to visit the U.N. But it should arguably be done sparingly. If done too frequently, it could cause more countries to sympathize with or even join the CRINKs against America.

The optimal strategy would enlist the support of the world’s most powerful democracies, especially those in the G7 grouping. Together, they could argue that the CRINK countries violated the U.N.’s human rights declaration, which they are signatories to, and so other U.N. protections do not apply to them. This includes the protections and visas normally afforded to other U.N. member states with respect to welcoming all of their officials, without exception, to New York for U.N. functions.

If visa denials are made only against countries, such as China and Russia, that almost all countries agree have transgressed against established human rights principles, then the world is more likely to support the United States in using this leverage while retaining the diplomatic influence that comes with hosting the U.N. headquarters.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.