UNGA77

After a week of discussions on Member States’ priorities, challenges and impacts, the high-level portion of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly concluded on Monday, with the presiding official observing that the sheer number of participants indicated the importance of the General Debate in international affairs.

The Permanent Representative of the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the UN said on Monday that global security is in its worst state since the Second World War, owing to the high-handedness of some countries attempting to replace the international order centered on the UN system with one “governed by unilateral and exclusive Western values”.

The current chaotic state of the world – from wars to the spread of terrorism and climate-induced disasters – is the result of hegemonic, wealth-hoarding countries and their ambitions to subjugate others, “which Syria knows only too well,” Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad said on Monday.

Amid the challenges facing the world today – from Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic to climate change and conflicts – Canada is convinced of the need for more multilateralism, not less, as well as a stronger and more effective United Nations.  

Every problem we face is a problem that we created – so it’s a problem we can solve together, declared UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed on Saturday, rallying the crowd gathered in New York’s Central Park for the 2022 Global Citizen Festival to keep holding their leaders accountable: with hope and action, a world free of hunger and poverty is possible.

Escalating gang violence has set off a crisis that is threatening “the very foundations of the rule of law” in Haiti, according to Foreign Minister Jean Victor Geneus, who told UN delegates in New York on Saturday that the authorities’ efforts to maintain order and ease ongoing political tensions could only succeed with robust international support.

Egypt, which is hosting the 2022 UN Climate Conference this November, is calling on the international community to act on climate pledges made to developing countries, the country’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, declared on Saturday.

Despite the world’s current phase of “turbulence and transformation”, there are “reasons for hope” amid broadening cooperation and deepening economic globalization, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the UN on Saturday, as he also upheld the ‘One China’ policy as “international consensus.”

India was represented at the opening of the 77th General Assembly by Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who reminded his audience that India is celebrating 75 years of independence, which he described as a story of the “toil, determination, innovation, and enterprise of millions of ordinary Indians”. 

Faced with the “inability” of Western countries to negotiate and the Ukrainian Government’s “war against its own people” in the east, Russia had “no choice” but to launch what the Government refers to as its special military operation, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the UN General Assembly on Saturday.