With the 78th UN General Assembly (UNGA) underway in New York City, all eyes are on what the main focus and takeaways will be, particularly given that, of the permanent five, veto-wielding powers of the Security Council, only the US will be represented at the highest level.
Two items will likely dominate —the war in Ukraine and progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, on which there is a special summit in New York that is expected to conclude with the adoption of a Political Declaration today (Tuesday).
The war in Ukraine will be a key item on the agenda, especially given that the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is one of the speakers scheduled to address the General Assembly on the first day of the debate.
This topic will also be critical in more indirect ways. Many countries have been affected by the war, in terms of their food security, the inflation of energy prices, and the increasingly tense and fractious relations between Russia and the West.
The resulting global instability has negatively affected the ability of the international community to tackle key issues, such as development and climate change, more effectively, something likely to be raised by several speakers in the debates.
But what of those who aren’t in attendance? With President Biden the only head of state from the five, veto-wielding superpowers to attend and address the General Assembly this morning, we can expect key leaders from the Global South to play a more important role this year.
President Lula of Brazil is the first speaker after the report of the General Secretary. South Africa, another key actor for the Global South, is also there with its president speaking this morning, while the new Nigerian president is scheduled to speak in the afternoon.
Apart from the US, key Western players sending their heads of state or government include Switzerland, Germany, and Japan. But in general, I would expect the so-called Middle Powers, including those from the Global South, which have for years pushed for greater recognition of their role, to take at least part of the limelight. This will also include countries like Turkey, Argentina, and Qatar.
It is both surprising and unsurprising to see the absence of certain leaders. Surprising, because the High-level Week at the General Assembly is one of the major universal platforms not only for addressing the assembled international community and raising key issues in front of a global audience but also for these heads of state and government to have bilateral and small multilateral meetings in the margins of the general assembly. This is where a lot of important business gets done. For example, President Biden hosted the leaders of five Central Asian states today in the first-ever presidential summit in the so-called C5+1 summit.
Conversely, it’s also not surprising, for example, that Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is not attending given that there is a warrant out for his arrest by the International Criminal Court. And the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has avoided any potential direct encounters with his US counterpart for quite some time.
The absence of the heads of state and government of Russia, China, the UK and France, however, should also not be overstated. Regardless of their high-level presence or not, they remain the key players in the UN system because of their privileged position as veto powers on the Security Council, which, compared to the General Assembly, is the more powerful of the UN organs. The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, met the Chinese Vice President, Han Zheng, yesterday (Monday) in New York, so the superpowers still interact at the UN, even if not at the highest levels.
By Professor Stefan Wolff
Professor Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security at The University of Birmingham and Head of Department for Political Science and International Studies. A political scientist by background, he specialises in the management of contemporary security challenges, especially in contemporary geopolitics and great-power rivalries, the prevention and settlement of ethnic conflicts and civil wars, and in post-conflict state-building in deeply divided and war-torn societies.