World leaders begin their annual meeting at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday amid growing global divisions, major wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, and the threat of greater conflict in the Middle East. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, previewing his opening ‘State of the World’ speech to presidents, prime ministers, kings and ministers at Sunday’s ‘Future Summit’, said: “Our world is going off the rails and we need tough decisions to get back on the rails.”
He said, ‘From the Middle East to Ukraine and Sudan, there is no end in sight to the raging and growing conflicts’. He said that the global security system is under ‘threatened by geo-political fragmentation, the demonstration of nuclear power and the growth of new weapons and battlefields’. Secretary-General Guterres also discussed inequality, the lack of an effective global system to respond to emerging existential threats, and the devastating effects of climate change. US President Joe Biden will likely make his last major appearance on the world stage in a remarkable moment at the General Assembly opening on Tuesday.
US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told reporters last week that about two billion people live in conflict-affected areas, and that the US’s focus at the General Assembly will be on ending the ‘war crisis’. But he said, “The most vulnerable people around the world are counting on us to make progress, to bring about change and to bring a sense of hope to them.”
Other speakers on the opening day will include Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Iran’s new President Masoud Pezhekian.
Iranian President Pezhekian on Monday accused Israel of setting a ‘trap’ to seek a wider war in the Middle East and lead his country into a wider conflict. He pointed to the deadly explosion of pagers, walkie-talkies and other electronic devices in Lebanon last week, blaming Israel. He also referred to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, in Tehran on July 31, a few hours after his inauguration.
He said, “We don’t want to fight, Israel wants to drag everyone into war and destabilize the region, they are dragging us to a point we don’t want.” Iran supports both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, recalled the conference held in San Francisco in 1945 when the United Nations was founded. The then US President Harry Truman asked the delegates to reject the belief that ‘might is right’ and reverse it to make ‘right is power’ and it was included in the Charter of the United Nations.
Miliband said, “Nearly 80 years later, we have seen the dire consequences of not being able to reverse this equation. In contexts like Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, power is making power.” In the face of growing global humanitarian needs, uncontrolled conflict, uncontrolled climate change and growing extreme poverty, Miliband challenged world leaders to ask, “How do you strengthen, not weaken, the principles of the United Nations Charter for the next 80 years?”
The annual meeting of the General Assembly, held after the two-day ‘Future Summit’, ends on September 30. The ‘Future Summit’ adopted a blueprint with the aim of uniting the world’s increasingly divided countries to tackle challenges of the 21st century, from conflicts to climate change, artificial intelligence (AI) and women’s rights. The forty-two-page ‘Agreement for the Future’ challenges the leaders of the 193 member states of the United Nations to turn their promises into action. It changes the lives of more than eight billion people in the world
“We are gathered here to bring multilateralism back from the brink of destruction,” said Secretary-General Guterres. He said that the leaders opened the door by accepting the agreement. “Now to walk through it is our common destiny, it demands not only consent but also work.”
Ukraine and its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took center stage at last year’s United Nations Global Summit. But as the first anniversary of Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel approaches on October 7, the focus is sure to be on the ongoing war in Gaza and the escalating violence along the Israel-Lebanon border. Violence is now threatening to spread throughout the Middle East. Palestinian President Mohammad Abbas is scheduled to speak on Thursday morning and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday afternoon.
