The 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, the largest annual gathering of world leaders, began on Monday after pandemic restrictions limited in-person attendance two years earlier. But the mood is likely to be grim, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and the escalating economic and environmental crisis.
The session will focus on the many challenges facing leaders today: the war in Ukraine that is polarizing the world order in a way not seen since the Cold War; the ripple impact of rising food prices on people around the world; the energy crisis that rocked the global economy; and concerns over climate disturbances such as the devastating floods in Pakistan.
“The General Assembly is meeting at a time of grave danger,” Antonio Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, said last week. “Our world is ravaged by war, ravaged by climate chaos, scarred by hatred, and humiliated by poverty, hunger, and inequality.”
Guterres said the meeting of world leaders in New York should provide hope through dialogue, debate and concrete plans to overcome divisions and crises.
This is a high command. Some 157 heads of state and government representatives plan to deliver speeches from Tuesday to Sunday, and the war in Ukraine and its consequences is expected to be a major theme.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine will address the assembly in a pre-recorded video speech. The General Assembly voted on Friday to grant it an exception to a rule mandating that all speeches must be delivered in person this year.
Food insecurity, from grain shortages to rising prices, will also be a priority. Developing countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East are expected to voice concerns that the world is too fixated on the war in Ukraine and that humanitarian aid is disproportionately directed to defuse the crisis, and that their own aid is being neglected.
Tensions are expected to be high between Russia, the United States and European countries over Ukraine; between China and the United States over Taiwan and trade; and between developing countries and the West over the allocation of development funds and other assistance.
“This is the first General Assembly of a fundamentally divided world,” said Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research group. “We’ve spent six months with everyone hitting each other. The glove is off.”
Several thematic summits and roundtables are scheduled to discuss issues ranging from education to the pandemic.
Guterres will on Wednesday host two meetings attended by foreign ministers. One is the challenges the Ukraine war has brought, including rising food and energy prices, and the resulting economic pressures. The other is about climate action. Guterres said he plans to tell leaders that the time for action is now.
President Biden will appear later than usual at the UN General Assembly, delayed by his return from Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in London. But his remarks are still expected to set the tone for a meeting that focuses heavily on Ukraine and climate change.
American presidents have historically been second among heads of state to address the meeting, after Brazil. Biden is expected to break that tradition this year, speaking on Wednesday instead of the scheduled Tuesday morning slot. The reason is, the president has just returned from a royal funeral in England, which was held on Monday.
When Biden picks up the microphone, he will be speaking to an international landscape that has changed dramatically since last year, when he delivered his first presidential address to the United States and seeks to reassert America’s global leadership after four years of former President Donald J. Trump.
Last year, Biden defended his decision to pull American troops out of Afghanistan and seek to promote democracy at a time of rising authoritarian sentiment around the world. He made America and its Western allies important partners, telling the assembly, “Our security, our prosperity, and our freedom are interconnected, in my view, like never before.”
Biden is expected to further emphasize the importance of the alliance this year, continuing his call for unity in support of Ukraine as it seeks to repel the invasion launched by Russian forces earlier this year. He is also expected to encourage world leaders to continue diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and work together to counter China’s economic and military rise.
The president enjoys performing on the global stage — especially his efforts to convince allies that the United States has continued its leadership role on important international issues such as war, governance, and environmental protection. The General Assembly will give him his first chance on the stage to commend the signing of legislation last month that is the most significant step in American history toward curbing emissions of greenhouse gases that drive climate change.
Four top world leaders will not be attending the annual leaders’ meeting at the United Nations this week: Russia, China, India and Ethiopia.
They will be represented by ministers who, in accordance with United Nations protocol, will deliver speeches this weekend after all heads of state and government have spoken in the General Assembly hall.
Russia’s President, Vladimir V. Putin, will not be in attendance, although the war he waged against Ukraine and its repercussions that reverberate around the world will dominate the event.
President Xi Jinping of China, a key financial contributor to the United Nations and a growing geopolitical power, also missed the General Assembly. China and the United States are rivals for political and economic influence at the United Nations.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who heads one of the largest and most diverse democracies, will also not attend in person.
Putin and Xi have missed the UN General Assembly in previous years, but their absence is more pronounced this year. Russia and China are key stakeholders on some of the most pressing issues discussed this week from the war in Ukraine to food security, climate and the economy.
The three leaders attended a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an organization focused on multilateral security, in Uzbekistan last week. It was Xi’s first trip outside China since the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2019.
From Ethiopia, where the government continues to battle the northern region of Tigray, in a war that has triggered severe food shortages that have left nearly half of Tigray’s six million people on the brink of starvation, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed should have attended General Assembly’s meeting. But he canceled at the last minute, according to Stéphane Dujarric, the UN spokesman.
The Ethiopian government has been battling a rebel group known as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front since November 2020.
This week’s UN meeting will bring Iran, the United States and others under the same roof after five months of fruitless negotiations to restore the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
But the chances of a formal joint meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to rekindle negotiations are minimal, according to American officials, Iranian and European diplomats.
Both Iran and the West plan to make a case to the world in New York that the other party is to blame and, must make concessions. Iran and the United States have failed to agree on a “final text” offered by the European Union last month, bringing talks to a standstill.
The Biden administration will argue that Tehran is to blame for the impasse in talks to curb its nuclear program, saying it is making new demands outside the scope of the deal. Iran will argue that the United States did not show good faith and provide guarantees that would make the deal beneficial to Iran.
France’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nicolas de Riviere, said members of the European negotiating team planned to use the General Assembly to “push very hard for the resumption of the deal and encourage the parties to compromise especially Iran.”
Iran’s President, Ebrahim Raisi, will be in New York for his first appearance at the UN General Assembly, gathering with his foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian. They are both expected to hold meetings with their bilateral partners of the nuclear deal except those from the United States.
Russia and China, the other parties to the deal, said they supported the final text deal and pushed for a speedy return to the deal.
The United States and several other countries began negotiations with Iran in April last year in a bid to restore the 2015 nuclear deal that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes but the United States, European allies and Israel suspect Iran of developing a covert nuclear weapons program.
Former President Donald J. Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018 despite Iran’s compliance and, as part of his “maximum pressure policy,” reimposed sanctions on Iran targeting oil sales and financial transactions.
Since then, Iran has significantly advanced its nuclear program and experts say its breakthrough timing of having enough stockpiles of enriched uranium for warheads has been reduced to weeks from a year under the deal.
Talks to restore the deal went on, on and on, until last month, when a breakthrough emerged at hand in part as Iran backed away from key demands that Washington abolish the Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization.
But then another curve ball appeared. Iran insisted in August that the United Nations atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, close an investigation into evidence of nuclear activity at undeclared sites in Iran. US officials and the agency have said that the request goes beyond the scope of the nuclear deal.
After more than two years of disruption to the Covid-19 pandemic, the annual meeting of world leaders at the UN General Assembly is back in full swing this week.
Tens of thousands of people from around the world — from heads of state to government delegates, civil society, activists, and members of the media — will descend on UN headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.
“We are very pleased to have the General Assembly return to its high-level week in person after two years,” said UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric. “Direct diplomacy is at the heart of the meeting.”
In 2020, the annual meeting is held virtually with leaders delivering prerecorded speeches. This marked the first time in the 75-year history of the United Nations that an in-person presence was cancelled.
Last year, the format was a mix of live attendance and pre-recorded speech depending on the preferences of each country.
So how do organizers reduce the risk of a diplomatic whirlwind not turning into a super-spread event? The UN took some precautions and enforced some rules.
The number of people allowed into the UN headquarters building will be limited and everyone will be required to wear a mask in all public areas. Journalists must be vaccinated and bring proof of vaccination.
The United Nations is asking anyone who has been exposed to the virus in the past five days, feels sick or tests positive to stay home.
The number of people each member country can bring into the building is limited to 10 people. States can bring up to six members inside the General Assembly hall where leaders deliver speeches from Tuesday to Sunday, and another four can accompany them inside the building.
Prior to the pandemic, UN headquarters hosted dozens of side events each day, attracting celebrities and experts in fields ranging from science to women’s right to press freedom.
This year, the events have been reduced to fewer than 20 and focused on the most pressing issues such as climate, food insecurity, pandemic response and education.
António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, will attend only events at headquarters* but has a full schedule of bilateral meetings with world leaders.
The war in Ukraine and the chaos it has caused both at home and abroad will dominate the gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly this week and underscore tensions over conflicts between the West and developing countries.
Western countries are expected to use the General Assembly platform to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and present it as an attack on the world order, international law and the principles of the UN charter, which prohibits aggression against an independent and sovereign state.
However, they will face some resistance from emerging leaders in Africa, Asia and the Middle East who are tired of how conflict has diverted attention from some of the major crises facing the region, from climate to food insecurity and humanitarian suffering.
The war in Ukraine “pushed up huge barriers among UN member states,” said Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group. Mr Gowan said that the United States and Europe were aware of these divisions and had been proactively planning to address Ukraine’s war fatigue at the United Nations this week.
The United States, European Union and African Union will also hold a joint conference on food insecurity and rising prices on Tuesday. António Guterres, the UN secretary general, will host a separate meeting with global leaders on Wednesday to discuss the war’s three main challenges: rising prices for food and energy and the tanking economy.
“We know that while this terrible war is raging across Ukraine, we cannot ignore the rest of the world,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, acknowledging that other countries have expressed concern about Ukraine dominating this week in New York. York. He added that, to address the issue, leaders will also remain focused on food, health and climate insecurity.
Ukraine will be represented this week by its prime minister and foreign minister. President Volodymyr Zelensky will deliver a pre-recorded address to the Assembly on Wednesday. He was granted an exception to the rule that all speakers must attend the meeting in person after the General Assembly vote on Friday.
The UN Security Council will also hold a session on Ukraine and the topic of impunity on Thursday. The meeting will be attended by foreign ministers and will bring together US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, for the first time since the conflict.
“This is an opportunity to talk and meet,” said Nicolas de Riviere, France’s ambassador to the United Nations who organized the meeting when France assumed the rotating council presidency this month. “I’m not sure we’ll have a breakthrough on this matter, but at least the channels will remain open.”
After two years of relative calm, the United Nations General Assembly will return to New York on its usual scale this year. That means New Yorkers will have to anticipate road closures, detours, and unannounced traffic freezes — and the frustration that comes with them — when hundreds of world leaders and their staff arrive in the city.
About 140 heads of state will be in the city, Patrick Freaney, in charge of the US Secret Service’s New York field office, told a news conference on Friday. Only 80 heads of state attended last year, mostly because of the pandemic.
But after two years of relative calm, traffic jams will become the rule as world leaders gather and give speeches at UN headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. There will be hundreds of motorcades and many security checkpoints.
“We strongly encourage New Yorkers and visitors to plan ahead, use alternative routes and use mass transit if they plan to visit the area,” Kim Royster, chief of transportation for the New York City Police Department, said during a press conference Friday.
Ms. Royster said that Midtown Manhattan — 42nd Street to 57th Street and First Avenue to Fifth Avenue — would be affected. Police officers and traffic officers will be deployed at intersections to assist traffic flow for cars, pedestrians and bicycles.
“If you must drive or make deliveries in the area, we advise you to avoid the area during 6am to 7pm,” said Ms. Royster. A more detailed list of roads that will be affected can be found on the police department website.
City officials are encouraging people to use public transportation because it would be the “fastest and safest way around the anticipated congestion,” Kenneth Corey, head of the N.Y.P.D. Department, said during a press conference on Friday.
He added that there were no “specific or credible threats” to the meeting or New York City, but “however, we ask everyone to remain vigilant at all times.”
“Customers can avoid heavy traffic by using the nearest 4-5-6 Lexington Avenue, which will operate on a normal weekday schedule,” an M.T.A spokesperson said. “Trains will run at least every two to three minutes and even more frequently during peak hours when vehicular traffic is expected to be most intense.”
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has encouraged people taking buses into and out of Manhattan to allow additional travel time to and from their destinations.
