At the beginning of June 2023, a message was widely circulated on social networks that instead of the flags of UN member states, rainbow flags were hung at the organization’s headquarters in New York. We checked if this is true.

Photo with a caption stating that “the flags of 193 UN member countries have been replaced with LGBT flags,” began spread in different languages on June 8. The image shows skyscrapers and rainbow flags. At the same time, some users claim that the photo was taken directly at the UN headquarters in New York, others - that the shooting location is located near the Rockefeller Center building, but the flags were replaced under the auspices of the UN. IN Telegram, according to the TGstat service, such publications received at least 1 million views, and one of the most popular was recording in the channel “Zloy Proof” (147,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), in which, in particular, on the basis of the photograph and its caption, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is accused of homosexuality. Users also shared the photo Facebook And "VKontakte" The plot has also spread widely on the English-language Internet - for example, one of tweets The photo was seen by 2.4 million social network users.

The photo itself, illustrating popular messages, is taken from “Wikipedia” and was made back in 2019, when rainbow flags were first raised on the flagpoles of Rockefeller Center. The flags of the UN countries and US states that usually surround the square in front of the building have been replaced from time to time for several years with thematic ones within the framework Flag Project. For example, as part of this initiative in 2022 in honor of Earth Day Each flagpole featured an environmentally friendly, biodegradable flag. On US national holidays on flagpoles remain only the stars and stripes of American flags.

Since 2019, every June in honor of Pride month (Pride Month) Rockefeller Center is decorated with rainbow flags. They were first displayed to commemorate the 50th anniversary Stonewall riots, which marked the beginning of the active struggle for LGBT+ rights.

Many users claim that the picture shows the UN headquarters, also located in New York, although these are two different buildings that are not related to each other. It is also hardly possible to confuse them on the ground, since they are located at a considerable distance from each other. The UN also has nothing to do with the initiative of Rockefeller Center, which replaced the flags in front of the building with rainbow ones for the entire month of June.

As for the UN headquarters building, the only flags that adorn it are the actual flags of the 193 member states. Fact checkers from Reuters And AP In connection with the dissemination of the photo, they sent inquiries to the UN and received official answers: there are no plans to replace state symbols with rainbow flags. However, in order to make sure that the UN building looks as usual, you can simply look at user publications Twitter or Instagram, equipped with appropriate labels.

Thus, the photo story that has become popular distorts and incompletely presents information, shifting the focus from the Rockefeller Center initiative to the UN, and the statement that the organization’s headquarters was decorated with rainbow flags is, in principle, false.

Cover photo: Phi, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons