Senior UN officials, including Secretary-General António Guterres, took part in a High-Level event at UN Headquarters in New York on Friday, noting the encouraging progress that has been made towards ending the COVID-19 pandemic, while acknowledging that work still needs to be done to ensure the most vulnerable are protected.
In his address to the UN General Assembly on Monday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian upheld multilateralism as the key to overcoming global challenges including conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
Humanity needs the “reserves of goodness present in human hearts” to confront the many challenges facing the world community, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of the Holy See, declared in his video address to the high-level General Debate of the UN General Assembly on Saturday.
In this special anniversary episode of our UNcomplicated podcast, hosts Sinjuda and Jason get to stay in their pyjamas to interview our colleague Reem Abaza, who spent the COVID-19 emergency working at the heart of the UN, as spokesperson for the President of the 74th General Assembly.
Music credit: The Veil, by the band Signal and Report, written by Chris Hall and Noah Miller; along with their track, Abbey Minor.
Plus, ‘Wave Wash’, by Ketsa.
Šefik Džaferović, the Bosnia and Herzegovina Head of State, used his address to the General Debate of the General Assembly on Wednesday to praise the European Union’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the help it has given to non-EU countries, such as his own.
UN Secretary-General's address to the Opening of the General Debate of the 75th Session of the General Assembly, on Tuesday, 22 September 2020.
UN Secretary-General's opening remarks at #UNGA press conference, on 16 September 2020
The 75th UN General Assembly (UNGA) session, begins on 15 September and this year, due to the ongoing global pandemic, it will be unlike any other in the organization’s three quarters of a century of existence.
The General Debate of the General Assembly, traditionally the most high-profile UN event of the year, will be a slimmed-down affair this September, with world leaders staying away from New York, and contributing set-piece speeches via video link, a UN spokesperson confirmed on Thursday.
Back in June, Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, was elected by acclamation to preside over the 74th session of the General Assembly, which begins on Tuesday.
In his first major interview with UN News, Mr. Muhammad-Bande told Cristina Silveiro that poverty eradication, inclusion and quality education would be his top priorities in office.
Calling education “a complex matter”, he spelled out that “whoever is denied an education is denied almost everything”.