Newsman: The U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls the world’s leaders to the “Summit of the Future” to make a new commitment to multilateralism and start fixing the aging global architecture to meet the rapidly changing world. The United Nations annual general assembly starts next week and the world leaders are gathering in New York attending the 79th U.N General Assembly.
U.N. Secretary-General Guterres warned that the world is seeing “a multiplication of conflicts and the sense of impunity” — a landscape where, he said, “any country or any military entity, militias, whatever, feel that they can do whatever they want because nothing will happen to them.”
“And the fact that nobody takes even seriously the capacity of the powers to solve problems on the ground,” he said, “makes the level of impunity (on) an enormous level.”
The U.N. chief told reporters ahead of the UNGA last week, the summit “was born out of a cold, hard fact: international challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them.” He pointed to “out-of-control geopolitical divisions” and “runaway” conflicts, climate change, inequalities, debt and new technologies like artificial intelligence which have no guardrails.
The summit is the prelude to this year’s high-level meetings that held every year in September during the UNGA. More than 130 presidents, prime ministers and monarchs are slated to speak along with dozens of ministers, and the issues from the summit are expected to dominate their speeches and private meetings during the general assembly sessions focusing crucial current world situation.
the U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters “The most vulnerable around the world are counting on us to make progress, to make change, to bring about a sense of hope for them.”
To meet the many global challenges, she said, the U.S. focus at the U.N. meetings will be on ending “the scourge of war.” Roughly 2 billion people live in conflict-affected areas, she said.
The 79th session of the UN General Assembly opened on September 10, 2024. In the general debates of the 79th UNGA session conversations will give a shape the solutions that can redefine our future.
From sea-level rise to antimicrobial resistance, UNGA 79 will tackle a broad range of challenges that can’t be solved by one nation alone. UNGA High-level Week kicks off on Sept. 24 this year, preceded by the two-day Summit of the Future. There, Member States are expected to outline ways the UN can adapt to meet emerging issues, from closing the digital divide and artificial intelligence to more equitable financing for low-income countries.
While all of the planet’s problems won’t be solved during these few short weeks, debates and conversations at UNGA 79 could set the stage for solutions to devastating global trends.
For nearly eight decades, the UN has brought countries together to overcome obstacles and achieve major wins for humanity — among them eradicating smallpox, shrinking the hole in the ozone layer, and accelerating the development and delivery of lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines.
High-Level meetings will be focus on two often overlooked issues: the threat of rising sea levels, and what the World Health Organization has called a “silent pandemic” — antimicrobial resistance.
The High-Level Meeting on the agenda confronts the threat posed by rising seas, which, “is an existential crisis for some Member States.” For many island nations, failing to meet the target of limiting global warming to 1.5℃ over preindustrial temperatures would have dire consequences.
