UN Secretary-General António Guterres opened the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York on Tuesday with unusually open words. The world is falling apart, he said, and it appears that the community of states is unable to come together. He identified climate change and the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine as the core problems of the day.
At such gatherings it is always interesting to see who is not there. It was clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not travel to New York. China’s President Xi Jinping also doesn’t show up at the United Nations. What was astonishing, however, was that both French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak decided not to attend in person.
It was said from Paris that Macron was having scheduling difficulties because he was visiting the British King Charles III. meet. London announced that the Prime Minister had too much to do. France and Great Britain, along with Russia, China and the USA, are permanent members of the UN Security Council, the most important body of the United Nations. Of these five states, only the USA is represented by the head of government this year. President Joe Biden addressed delegates on Tuesday.
The fact that four out of five permanent members of the Security Council are not sending the highest-ranking delegations this year is once again putting the focus on the body. There has been a debate in New York for years about how to reform the Security Council. However, these debates usually lead to nothing because the five states mentioned have no interest in them.
Guterres specifically addressed this issue in his speech. The Security Council is a construct from 1945, when a world war had just ended and many states were still under colonial rule. “The world has changed,” he said, “but we haven’t changed.” It is therefore essential that the Security Council be reformed.
The German delegation knows Guterres is on his side in this project. Germany has been pushing for reform of the council for years and hopes to gain a permanent seat in a revamped body. One of the Germans’ core arguments is that they are the second largest donor to the United Nations after the United States. This year they are represented by, among others, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
The appearance of Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky was eagerly awaited. When he entered the auditorium in the morning to attend Guterres’ speech, he was greeted with demonstrative applause. In the afternoon he himself spoke to the delegates. Above all, he focused on how Russia uses food and energy as weapons. Not only Ukraine is affected by this, the deliberate destruction of supply chains is leading to hardship in Africa and Southeast Asia, for example.
In the most moving part of his speech, Zelensky described how Russian troops had abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. “What happens to these children?” he asked. They are taught to hate their home country, Ukraine.
As expected, US President Joe Biden also addressed the war in Ukraine in his speech, although not in as much detail as last year. This may be due to the fact that some countries in the global south said that there were more problems in the world than the war in Ukraine, which is why the general assembly should not be monothematic.
Biden said: “If we abandon the principles of the UN Charter to pacify an aggressor, can UN member states still be sure that they will be protected? If we allow Ukraine to be divided, then that is it Independence from any nation still safe? The answer is no.” Therefore, the USA would continue to stand on Ukraine’s side. Biden wants to meet with Zelensky in Washington on Thursday. The Ukrainian president hopes for further support from the USA.
The American president also took up a motif that he often uses in larger speeches. The world is at a turning point in history, he said, and it is a question of whether democracies can assert themselves or whether autocracy will become the dominant form of government. In contrast to the isolationism of his Republican rival Donald Trump, Biden told delegates: “We know that our future is tied to your future.”