UN General Assembly 73rd Session

Although Lebanon ‘is groping our way to rise from consecutive crises’, President Michel Aoun said on Wednesday that his country was being buffeted by regional crises and called on the United Nations to show global leadership by taking action to resolve conflicts in the Middle East.

As the world celebrates the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) this year, the United Nations General Assembly dedicated a high-level event on Wednesday, to discussing how respect for human rights in societies can help advance peace and sustainable development.

As governments prepare to meet later this year for the next round of climate talks, Secretary-General António Guterres today underscored the need to speed up action on an issue that is “the absolute priority” for the United Nations.

The fight against tuberculosis (TB) is drastically under-funded, with a gap of around $13 billion per year, said Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed at the first-ever High-Level TB Meeting, held at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Empathy, equality, and efficiency should be the hallmarks of the work of the United Nations, Kersti Kaljulaid, the President of Estonia, told the General Assembly today as she set out her country’s vision for addressing global challenges such as migration, climate change and the shrinking space for free trade.

President Donald Trump told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday that the United States would impose sanctions on Iran that would be “tougher than ever before” in the coming months, following its unilateral withdrawal earlier this year from the deal brokered to restrict Iran’s nuclear programme, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Warning that the world seems to be drifting away from dialogue and towards unilateral action – at great peril to very fundamental tenets of democracy – the President of Namibia called on world leaders, gathered at the United Nations General Assembly, to embrace multilateralism.

The time has come to make tangible progress to rid the world of nuclear weapons, top United Nations officials stressed today, citing the grave threat posed by such weapons to global security.