UN News: We are speaking here on the cusp of the 78th General Assembly session, where a record number of world leaders are expected, but from the P5 (the permanent members of the Security Council), only one Head of State. What does it say about the UN as a centre of diplomacy at a time when there are crises on so many fronts?
Secretary-General: Well, first of all, this is not a Vanity Fair. This is a political body in which governments are represented. And what matters is that they are represented by someone that can assume to be better than necessary at the present moment.
So I’m not so worried about who’s coming. What I’m worried is that to make sure that countries are here and they are ready to assume the commitments that are necessary to make the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – that unfortunately are not moving in the right direction – a reality. And for that we need to have commitments on a number of very important things.
First, to recognize that we have an unjust, dysfunctional and outdated international financial system that needs to be reformed.
Second, we have made the proposal of an SDG stimulus.
We need $500 billion that are necessary to make sure that developing countries that are drowning in debt that, have no fiscal space, no access to concessional funding, many of them because they are middle income countries or to long term funding because they lost that possibility, to make sure that countries will have the resources that they need in order to make the SDGs a reality.
Africa today spends more money servicing the debt than in education. So this shows how much we need to transform an unfair international global system to make sure that the SDGs become a reality.
On the other hand, this will be the right place for countries to come and assume commitments in relation to peace. We have so many crises around the world, we need a much stronger commitment of international community in favour of peace.
And we have the Climate Ambition Summit in which we are asking countries and we are asking companies, the civil society and others, to come and present their engagement with new projects, with new commitments able to reverse the present trend in which climate change is out of control as we know. We are moving to 2.6-2.8°C of global temperature rise by the end of the century, we need to get back to our objective of 1.5°C.
We are still on time. It is still possible with political will, but a lot needs to be done in phasing out fossil fuels, investments in renewable energy and in many other areas of the economies and the societies for us to be able to avoid the present trend. We can already see natural disasters multiplying and becoming more devastating everywhere, drought that is transforming entire areas in areas where human life can no longer take place. We see the rise in sea level is accelerating in the melting in Greenland and in the Antarctic.
So it’s time to act decisively, and that is the reason of this Climate Ambition Summit in the preparation of all these things require Member States to be strongly engaged, but require also the civil society to be present, to be vibrant.
In the weekend that precedes the high-level week we are having a fantastic presence of the business community and the civil society in the UN and that is a demonstration that beyond governments there is a lot of political will in favour of the SDGs, in favour of justice in the world and in favour of climate action.
UN News: You mentioned the Climate Ambition Summit and quite unusually, those who have been invited to speak are those with credible net zero plans. So many are wondering, why did you choose this rather innovative approach?
Secretary-General: I think it’s important to have campaigns involving everybody, to have initiatives involving everybody.
It’s important to give opportunities to those that are the front liners, to those that are the most committed to climate action, those that have the good practices. It’s important to give them an opportunity to show what they are doing for the others to be able to learn and to copy.
ESCAP Photo/Louise Lavaud
Participants at a UN conference on South-South cooperation in Bangkok.
UN News: So switching gears. In this action-packed week, you have the Sustainable Development Summit kicking off the week, you have the Climate Ambition Summit on Wednesday, but you also have three summits focusing on global health: on tuberculosis, on universal health coverage and on pandemic preparedness.
Coming out of COVID-19, where we saw a tremendous lack of solidarity and inequity where many nations had really very little access to life saving medical equipment to vaccines. This had impact on geopolitical relationships. So what do you see things needs to happen on the global public health front.
Secretary-General: Well, first of all, universal health coverage is an essential objective of UN. And it requires not only our systems to work, it requires also financial systems to be much more fair than what they are today.
And there are central questions to be addressed in relation to intellectual property and the way the pharmaceutical industry operates. Let us not forget that 90 per cent of the investment that is made in pharmaceutical products is essentially for the diseases that are belonging to the North. And only 10 per cent for the diseases belonging to the South.
So there are basic structural inequalities in the way the system works, and one of the things that I believe is essentially is increase the resources and the power of the World Health Organization.
And this is also very important for pandemic experience that we must have the World Health Organization in a much stronger influence in the way the decisions are taken, in the way information is put at disposal of everybody and shared and in the way international action is coordinated responding to pandemics, but also addressing what are the most dramatic health problems in the world.
Tuberculosis that many have forgotten, still remains very dramatic source of suffering in this world.
UN News: Now you have spoken of some extremely major challenges that need to be confronted, but I think we are all aware that the war in Ukraine is going to loom large over this General Assembly session and the UN offers a theatre for diplomacy.
How do you see the potential of dialogue leading to peace? And do you have hope that there is a way to resurrect the Black Sea Initiative which brought relief to millions of people around the world.
Secretary-General: We are working hard in order to make it happen. We are working hard in order to make sure there is full access of Ukrainian and Russian food and fertilizers to global markets. That is absolutely essential, but we do not minimize the difficulty of the obstacles in the very dramatic situation we have today in the Black Sea after the end of the Russian participation in the Black Sea initiative.
On the other hand, the central objective is peace, but peace must be just and peace must be in line with UN Charter and in line with international law.
And to be honest, I do not think in this General Assembly the conditions are met to have a serious dialogue on peace. I think the parties are far from that possibility at the present moment.
We will never, never stop our efforts to make sure that peace comes to Ukraine. A just peace in line with the Charter and in line with the international law
But we will never, never stop our efforts to make sure that peace comes to Ukraine. A just peace in line with the Charter and in line with the international law.
Because the war in Ukraine is today a major factor for increasing geopolitical tensions and the increase of geopolitical tensions is a major reason for us not to be able to address effectively the challenges of present times, climate change and the risks of disruptions caused by new technologies, for which there is not an effective global governance system.
Artificial intelligence is a case in point. It can bring enormous benefits to humankind, but it can be a source of risks that need to be mitigated.
Unfortunately, at the present moment, the world is not united facing these challenges and that is why it is so important that the war in Ukraine ends because it is one of the factors that is undermining the capacity of the world to come together.
UN teams deliver food and water to a small village near Kherson, Ukraine, about 15 kilometres from the frontline.
UN News: Apart from global leaders who are coming here, we are going to have a lot of representatives from civil society, from business, as you already mentioned, from academia, from the science community, young people. What is your overarching message to all of them?
Secretary-General: I believe that the presence of civil society, the presence of businesses, the presence of men and women in science, the presence of young people and women’s organizations are absolutely essential if this General Assembly is to reflect what society wants at a global level and at a societal level.
Even if governments sometimes don’t follow society’s lead, society wants peace, society wants justice, society wants the Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved. Society wants effective policies to address, so that it doesn’t become humanity’s collective nightmare.
