Leaders of a world fractured by war, climate change and persisting inequality gather under one roof Tuesday to hear the U.N. chief summon them to take united action on humanity’s huge challenges – and to start delivering their own assessments on the most global of stages.
“People are looking to their leaders for a way out of this mess,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said ahead of the annual gathering of presidents and premiers, ministers and monarchs at the General Assembly.
He said the world needs action now – not merely more words – to deal with the worsening climate emergency, escalating conflicts, “dramatic technological disruptions” and a global cost-of-living crisis that is increasing hunger and poverty.
“Yet in the face of all this and more,” Guterres said, “geopolitical divisions are undermining our capacity to respond.”
This year’s week-long session, the first full-on meeting of world leaders since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted travel, has 145 leaders scheduled to speak. It’s a large number that reflects the multitude of crises and conflicts.
But for the first time in years, U.S. President Joe Biden, who will speak soon after the U.N. chief, will be the only leader from the five powerful veto-wielding nations on the U.N. Security Council to address the 193-member assembly.
China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Rishi Sunak are all skipping the U.N. this year. That should put the spotlight on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who will be making his first appearance at the assembly’s podium later Tuesday, and on Biden, who will be watched especially for his views on China, Russia and Ukraine.
The absence of leaders from the four Security Council powers has sparked grumbling from developing countries who want major global players to listen to their demands – including for money to start closing the growing gap between the world’s haves and have-nots.
The G77, the major U.N. group of developing countries that now has 134 members including China, lobbied hard to make this year’s global gathering focus on the 17 U.N. goals adopted by world leaders in 2015. Those are badly lagging at the halfway point to their 2030 due date.
At a two-day summit to kick-start action to achieve the goals, Guterres pointed to grim findings in a U.N. report in July. He said 15% of some 140 specific targets to achieve the 17 goals are on track. Many are going in the wrong direction, and not a single one is expected to be achieved in the next seven years.
The wide-ranging goals include end extreme poverty and hunger, ensure every child gets a quality secondary education, achieve gender equality and make significant inroads in tackling climate change — all by 2030.
At the current rate, the report said, 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty and 84 million children won’t even be going to elementary school in 2030 – and it will take 286 years to reach equality between men and women.
Guterres told leaders at Monday’s opening of the summit he called to rescue the 17 sustainable development goals, or SDGs, that they promised in 2015 to build “a world of health, progress and opportunity” for all people – and to pay for it.
Soon after he spoke, leaders from the 193 U.N. member nations adopted a 10-page political declaration by consensus which recognizes that the goals are “in peril.” But it reaffirms more than a dozen times, in different ways, leaders’ commitment to achieve the SDGs, reiterating their individual importance.
The declaration is short on specifics, but Guterres said he was “deeply encouraged” especially by its commitment to improving developing countries’ access to “the fuel required for SDG progress: finance.” He pointed to its support for an SDG stimulus of at least $500 billion a year, aimed at offsetting challenging market conditions faced by developing countries.
At the summit, leaders were then supposed to make pledges to meet the SDGs.
As an example, Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who chairs the U.N. group of least developed countries, said they need “massive scaling up of affordable finance” including through the SDG stimulus. He said foreign investment to the least developed countries fell about 30% in 2022 compared to 2021, and he urged developed countries to be more generous in helping the world’s poorest countries.
There are also hundreds of side events during high-level week.
The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell told reporters after a closed meeting to try to revive the decades-old peace process between Israel and the Palestinians that there was “a strong commitment to the two-state solution.”
He said there were 60 participants at the meeting organized by the EU, the Arab League and several other countries, and called it “a good starting point.”
There was “an injection of new political will,” Borrell said, and three senior-level working groups were established to examine what Israeli-Palestinian peace would look like. He said they will start work in a month in Brussels.
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34 Comments
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William_Blake
What 'mess'?
OssanAmerica
Start by throwing Russia off the UNSC. The whole purpose of an organization dedicated to preserving world peace is flushed down the toilet when a permanent UNSC member can invade another country and start a war for territorial gain and prevent UN resolutions and actions against it.
wallace
Why? He was elected.
wallace
Not even possible.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Remove the secret China debt and other lenders will be willing to step in.
albaleo
As one comedian put it, "if you believe in God, you've got to acknowledge that the guy is in over his head now".
Bad Haircut
The current mob and their ilk had a lot to do with getting this world into such a mess to begin with, so we can't count on them to pave the way to a brighter future. Best they, including Antonio "Global Boiling" Guterres himself, be locked up with hard labour with nothing but ze bugs to eat, and we set about finding new leaders who respect individual rights and responsibilities, national sovereignty, and the rule of law.
Hello Kitty 321
@OssanAmerica
I take it you are joking. If not the the US must go too as they are in a perpetual state of war.
diagonalslip
I doubt that, since most people, I think, realize that 'our leaders' are the problem, not the solution..... if we are in a mess, it's because they led us into it.... they're the 'experts', they're 'in charge', right?
Yrral
Zelensky crying because Lavrov is in the US,this is America,not Ukraine,he has no power in America,to tell who entered ,just be lucky,he is in the US to beg like a dog for scraps
mountainpear
@Yrral Oh, so you're one of those people who think Putin is the good guy, just defending his territory.
Which people? The ones who'll soon be getting their 6th vaccine soon?
Dr.Cajetan Coelho
Humankind is thirsting for leaders who can bend low to uplift the downtrodden. Wishing the United Nations Secretary-General Senhor Antonio Guterres, his powerful world leaders and their distinguished colleagues, tons of stamina and strength as they get on the front foot to serve Planet Earth and its teeming billions.
Yrral
I do not give a damn about Putin or Russian, or Ukraine, neither believe in liberty equality and justice for all,both can reap what they sowed and leave the US out of their mess,so we can concentrate on our own mess
u_s__reamer
When we survey the roster of world "leaders" and see what most of them have wrought, it's obvious they have been a big part of the problem. Only less corrupted democratic institutions that produce a better group of honest leaders with functioning IQs can fix the looming crises that threaten to wreck natural environments and severely compromise the viability of biological diversity on our fragile planet in thrall to capitalist exploitation and greed.
Eastmann
yes nations are leaving US controlled circle thats right....pendejo
OssanAmerica
But not to make another country a part of the US. That's the big difference between the US and dictatorships
Kuku
wallaceToday 02:59 pm JST
Yanukovich was elected as well
commanteer
This is the crux of the problem. People demand to be led. They get led into disaster. Then demand the same leaders lead them back out. People can get along surprisingly well without leaders. About time they see that and start to solve the problems all their previous leaders have gotten them into.
But I expect they will simply find a new leader to "save" them. Once again.
commanteer
Not as much of a difference as one might think. Using the central banks and other coercive powers, the US essentially rules over most countries in Asia and Europe.
Mark
You Must Be Kidding, with the current leadership we have across the globe, we are in for a VERY long wait.
Keepyer Internetpoints
I think the only thing most of us are looking to world leaders to do is either die or step aside, especially the ones behind the scenes with the real power....the bankers, corporate board chairs, and corporate owners.
Here is someone who truly does not understand how the West was won. From sea to shining sea, and America did not, could not stop there but also took Hawaii and Guam, and the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
When so-called sovereign nations have to make their banks give data on U.S. citizens to the U.S. government, that nation is a vassal. Its called FATCA and Japan, Canada, Britain and others were coerced into doing this. America need not be bigger as a country since it spans over the globe as a empire.
Thunderbird2
@Yrral
That seems familiar rhetoric...
As for the 'mess'... well there will never be equality around the globe - the rich need to the poor to make things at affordable prices... this planet will never be an idealistic Utopia... we are nowhere near that level of enlightenment and all around nice-ness
Lord Dartmouth
We may be in a mess, but the last people we need are the globalist UN or any WEF-affiliated drones.
Dr Maybe
@Commanteer
What a lovely fantasy world you live in.
People can get along surprisingly well without leaders.
Examples (post Stone Age)?
About time they see that and start to solve the problems all their previous leaders have gotten them into.
But I expect they will simply find a new leader to "save" them. Once again.
So what, people are going to organize into peaceful collectives all over the world? Sounds lovely. Meanwhile, who's watching the missile silos when the lunatics go on the prowl?
Dr Maybe
@Bad Haircut
Best they, including Antonio "Global Boiling" Guterres himself, be locked up with hard labour with nothing but ze bugs to eat, and we set about finding new leaders who respect individual rights and responsibilities, national sovereignty, and the rule of law.
Now the UN chief is a demon? I can see what sort of "leader" you want. The moronic, narcissistic, self-serving, orange-skinned type. You are deluded. He doesn't give a flying ... about you! Get it through your head. He cares about himself, probably most of his family, and maybe about some of the "1%".
Dr Maybe
@Lord Dartmouth
the last people we need are the globalist UN
How spectacularly wrong you are sir. You should have your title revoked. The world is burning up. Ecosystems nearly everywhere are under stress, if not on the point of collapse. Only global co-ordination of some kind can make a positive difference (although I hold out little hope of any form of common sense prevailing). That should go without saying. That would indicate a role for the UN then.
Bad Haircut
Haha, that's quite a leap there, Dr Maybe! Your snarky, poorly informed reply says you don't want leaders who respect individual rights and responsibilities, national sovereignty, and the rule of law. Baffling indeed, but if that's what you want... Count yourself lucky you already have leaders like that in spades. No need to go looking.
ArtistAtLarge
People are looking for leaders to make life better? Then why do they keep electing the same suspects over and over who caused the mess?
Sven Asai
No chance, of course all the mess will stay and grow. Maybe some don't know yet, but the leader's dead for decades already.
GBR48
quote: People are looking to their leaders for a way out of this mess.
No we aren't. They are the idiots who got us into this mess. Getting rid of them is the start of fixing things.
TaiwanIsNotChina
I'm so sorry the 19th century was not a good century in your view.
I would wager every country would want this. Who wouldn't want to know where the money is being hidden from taxation or what it is being used for overseas?
TaiwanIsNotChina
So since you say "as well" and Russia also implicitly recognized the post-maidan government, there is no issue that the most recent election winner is the one that matters. Russia doesn't even pretend that Yanukovich's house is a government in exile.
2020hindsights
Kuku
Need to change out Zelenskyy for a new leader
Why? He was elected.
And Yanukovich fled Ukraine after being impeached by the Ukraine parliament.
2020hindsights
Kuku
Need to change out Zelenskyy for a new leader
Why? He was elected.
I will also note that Yanukovich had his opponent in the election, Tymoshenko, imprisoned on politically motivated trumped up charges of abuse of office over a gas deal with Russia.
Yanukovich was no friend of democracy.