United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres holds high hopes for the 78th session of the annual General Assembly in New York City.
Addressing presidents and prime ministers, monarchs and ministers at the opening of the U.N. General Assembly's high-level meeting, Guterres listed several "existential threats" the world is facing, from climate change to disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence.
"Our world is becoming unhinged," he said. "Geopolitical tensions are rising. Global challenges are mounting. And we seem incapable of coming together to respond," Guterres told the leaders. He said that the UN and the ways that countries interact must evolve to meet the era.
"People are looking to their leaders for a way out of this mess," he said. "Yet in the face of all these and more, geopolitical divisions are undermining our capacity to respond."
He wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, the @UN was created precisely for moments like this - moments of maximum danger & minimum agreement. "What we need is determination to heal divisions & forge peace."
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with Guterres ahead of the UNGA. According to a State Department statement, they discussed "a wide array of issues, including the Black Sea Grain Initiative, Russia's unprovoked war against Ukraine, and the security situation in Haiti. They discussed U.S. priorities for the General Assembly, including reinforcing the core principles of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, modernizing the UN to address 21st-century challenges, and our efforts to advance the UN's sustainable development goals. The Secretary shared information on U.S.-hosted side events focused on addressing the threat of synthetic drugs, harnessing artificial intelligence to advance the UN's sustainable development goals, and leveraging private capital for major infrastructure projects."
With the French, British, Chinese and Russian leaders absent, some analysts have suggested this is a setback for the UNGA, but Guterres dismissed the notion.
"This is not a Vanity Fair. This is a political body in which governments are represented," he told UN News.
"What matters is that [countries] are represented by someone that can [rise to] the present moment," he said, and added: "So I'm not so worried about who's coming. What I'm worried [about] is making sure the countries that are here... are ready to assume the commitments necessary to make the Sustainable Development Goals that unfortunately are not moving in the right direction a reality."
According to Le Monde, "Such notable absences reflect the crisis affecting UN bodies, against a backdrop of an international stage that is crumbling. Former diplomat Ge'rard Araud, a one-time French ambassador to the UN, said, 'Multilateralism is seriously compromised in an increasingly multipolar world. The absence of Security Council leaders is yet another symptom, but not the only one, of a powerless UN, caused by the war in Ukraine and the rivalry between the United States and China.'"
US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are both attending the UNGA and are focused heavily on Russia's war in Ukraine. With a large number of African leaders representing the so-called Global South, and who refuse to choose sides between Russia and Ukraine, Zelenskyy has his challenges cut out for himself if he hopes to convince these leaders to side with him against Moscow. As a reminder, 35 member states, including 17 African states, China and India, refrained from condemning Moscow at the recent G20 Summit in New Delhi.
With so much at stake for Zelenskyy, he is unfortunate to find himself surrounded by a group of leaders who are more worried about global warming than the fate of one European country. Climate change is the new focus and the UN is making sure of it.
