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UN General Assembly 73rd Session

Special Coverage of the 73rd General Debate
25 September-1 October 2018

As world leaders gather in New York in the coming days, the curtain will rise on the busiest diplomatic season of the year at United Nations Headquarters.

Here, UN News gives you a front row seat to all the action during the General Assembly’s annual; high-level segment, known as the general debate. Follow monarchs, presidents and prime ministers, as they define global responses to many of today’s pressing challenges, including climate change, international migration, protracted conflicts, and extreme poverty and hunger.

Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the opening of the general debate of the General Assembly's 73rd session.
UN Photo/Cia Pak

Climate change and multilateralism figure high on first day of UN General Assembly debate

If there was one issue that was a recurrent theme on Tuesday on the first day of the United Nations General Assembly's annual general debate, it was the potentially catastrophic impact of climate change , from Secretary-General António Guterres’s opening address warning global Heads of State and Government  that “its speed has provoked a sonic boom SOS across the world”, to individual leaders highlighting their individual vulnerabilities.

President Emmanuel Macron of France addresses the seventy-third session of the United Nations General Assembly.
UN Photo/Cia Pak

Dialogue and multilateralism key to tackling global challenges France’s Macron says at UN, urging leaders not to accept ‘our world unraveling’

Deploring what he saw as a “deep crisis” of the traditional international order, French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday warned from the rostrum of the United Nations General Assembly against the temptation towards unilateralism and pleaded for a “new global balance”, crafted by all countries working together.

UN Radio/Laura Jarriel

Violence against the LGBTI community: UN focuses on ‘need to challenge hatred’

As the United Nations celebrates 70 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a high-level event on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary killings of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBTI) persons around the world, heard event moderator and Executive Director of OutRight Action International, Jessica Stern, describe the challenges facing the community as nothing short of a “global crisis”.