A little more than a month before the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Palestinian officials to deny and/or revoke their visas for entry into the United States. On Aug. 29, 2025, the U.S. State Department reaffirmed this decision ahead of the U.N. General Assembly, which is typically held in New York City. As a result, the U.S. did not grant visas to the Palestinian delegation scheduled to participate in the General Assembly, according to the Palestinian Mission to the U.N. (archived).
Palestine is an observer state to the U.N., meaning it can attend and speak at U.N. meetings but cannot vote.
Ahead of that session, which began on Sept. 9, 2025, posts on social media claimed the U.N. had moved the meeting of its General Assembly to Geneva, Switzerland, in response to the U.N. denying Palestinian officials visas to attend the General Assembly session. Those claims were liked 23,000 times on X (archived), 10,000 likes on Threads (archived) and were viewed 240,000 times on YouTube (archived).
But, the claim that the U.N. General Assembly was moving from New York to Geneva in response to the American denial of visas for Palestinian officials was false. Although there were some calls to move locations, and there is precedent for doing so, the 2025 September session ultimately began in New York City.
On Sept. 8, 2025, the United Nations posted to X (archived) that the September General Assembly meeting was going to take place at the U.N. headquarters in New York City. Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the U.N.'s secretary-general, also addressed the meeting's location in a Sept. 8 press briefing.
"I've been getting a lot of questions over the weekend, and because of the high volume of misinformation regarding whether a vote had taken place in the General Assembly to move the high-level session of the General Assembly out of New York, I want to be clear that there was no such vote in the General Assembly, and that I am not aware of any preparations being made to move the General Assembly's high-level session out of New York," Dujarric said.
Dujarric then addressed "reports on the internet over the last three or four days" when asked about the Palestinian delegation during her question-and-answer session with reporters.
"Let me just, because this needs to be clear to everyone. There were reports on fake news sites over the Internet, saying that a vote had taken place in the General Assembly, saying that the session would be moved outside of New York," Dujarric said. "That is wrong. There was no vote in the General Assembly … to the point where delegations, journalists from serious organizations like yours, were calling us to confirm that there'd been a vote. So I just want to be clear there was no vote. I'm not aware of any plan afoot to move the GA session."
Dujarric then went on to say that the U.N. was "very clear on expressing our concern" over the U.S. decision to not grant visas to the Palestinian delegation, one of whom, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, was scheduled to speak to the U.N. on Sept. 25. Dujarric said the U.N. believes the visa denials go against the host country treaty.
The host country treaty Dujarric referred to is the agreement between the U.S. and the U.N. when New York City was chosen as the latter's headquarters. Tha
Although the U.N. did not move the location of its September session, there were calls for it to do so. On Aug. 29, DAWN, a U.S.-based nonprofit that supports democracy and human rights in the Middle East, called on the U.N. to move the General Assembly session to Geneva. On Sept. 1, a delegate in the European Parliament suggested the European Union should push the U.N. to move the September session to Geneva.
Precedent exists for such a decision. In 1988, after the U.S. denied a visa to Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat ahead of a General Assembly meeting to consider recognizing the State of Palestine, the U.N. voted 154-2 to relocate its General Assembly meeting to Geneva.