The intervention of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, before the UN General Assembly, which met this week in its 78th session, reminded this Tuesday that the attention of the international community and the activities of high diplomacy remain monopolized by Ukraine- War. “Russia believes that the world will grow tired and allow Ukraine to be brutalized without consequences. But I ask you: If we abandon the basic principles of the UN Charter to appease an aggressor, can any member state have confidence that it will be protected? “If we allow Ukraine to be torn apart, is the independence of a nation secured?” Biden told the plenary session at the opening session of the 78th General Assembly.
“The answer is no. We must confront this brazen aggression today to deter other potential aggressors tomorrow,” he stressed, calling for more military aid to the Kiev government. “That is why the United States, together with our allies and partners around the world, will continue support the courageous people of Ukraine in defending their sovereignty, territorial integrity and freedom.”
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Like UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his inaugural address, the US president pushed for Security Council reform, an initiative in which he confirmed the start of “serious consultations” to resolve its enlargement. The highest executive body of the UN, consisting of 15 members, five of which, including the USA and Russia, are permanent members, is blocked in the Ukraine conflict by the veto right of Russia, which has recorded each of its resolutions on paper. At that UN meeting, Biden proposed quickly deploying an international force to Haiti to help police there fight the organized gangs that have hijacked the country’s security.
Biden aligned himself with the message that defines this General Assembly: achieving a “more secure, prosperous and fair world for all, because we know that our future is linked to yours.” AND [porque] “No nation can meet today’s challenges alone,” he said, citing “unprecedented heat waves in the United States and China” as examples. Forest fires are devastating North America and southern Europe. Fifth year of drought in the Horn of Africa. Tragic floods in Libya that have killed thousands of people,” snapshots that “powerfully show what awaits us if we do not reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and begin preparing our world for climate change.” The president named his administration as Example in the fight against this climate crisis: “It is”[una] “An existential threat not only to us, but to all of humanity.” Regarding China, he assured that his government did not want relations with Beijing to “degenerate into a conflict.”
Limited political relevance
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The 78th session of the UN General Assembly, the annual event of international diplomacy, theoretically the great week of negotiations and dialogue, began this Tuesday in New York with a program marked by the intervention of great leaders such as Biden, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Volodímir Zelenski, although the political level of the call, whose agenda is dominated by the war in Ukraine for the second year in a row, is rather limited: proof of this is that the President of the United States becomes the only leader of the United States five permanent member countries of the Security Council addressing the plenary session. Emmanuel Macron and Rishi Sunak will not intervene on the side of France or the United Kingdom, not to mention Russia, which was relegated to the irrelevant session on Saturday, or China, which will also not send its presidents. Meanwhile, the so-called Global South is trying to make its voice heard beyond mentioning the war in Ukraine.
In his opening speech, Guterres opened the session with a specific mention of the Derna disaster (Libya), where, as he said, crises were accumulating: that of an entrenched conflict, that of “climate chaos” and the crisis arising from incompetence As a result of this crisis, leaders – the two sides in the war that divides the country – are striving to reach a peaceful agreement that will eliminate the misrule that has prevailed since 2011. Guterres, who never tires of repeating the urgent need to address the climate emergency and advocate for global justice and solidarity, assumes that multilateral institutions are unable to respond to the challenges. “The world has changed, but our institutions have not,” Guterres said. “We cannot effectively address the problems as they are if the institutions do not reflect the world as it is.” [ahora]“.
“It is time to renew multilateral institutions based on the economic and political realities of the 21st century, based on justice, solidarity and universality, and anchored in the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law.” “This means reforming the Security Council in line with today’s world,” he said of the organization’s highest executive body, constrained by the veto powers of Russia and China and, in practice, handcuffed and incapable of action, as shown by Russia’s invasion from Ukraine has. Failure to reform these institutions will lead to “greater fragmentation” in a world characterized by “increasing authoritarianism.”
After Guterres and before Biden, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took the floor. “Brazil has returned to the forefront of the global community to help address the global challenges facing humanity, which can be summarized under one heading: inequality,” said the Brazilian president, returning to the podium of the 20th Assembly years after his first term in office returned. Lula emerged as a standard-bearer for the Global South, with a strong call to eradicate hunger and poverty, the keys to inequality. “Hunger must be a central issue,” Lula said, recalling that “735 million people will go to sleep tonight not knowing whether they will eat tomorrow.”
The Brazilian president also stressed the importance of democracy in combating plagues such as misinformation and the threat of “far-right adventurers” and proposed a dialogue to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, the extension of which, in his opinion, is an example of Ukraine’s inability to organize and the international community. Lula returned to his nuanced proposal for a third way to resolve the conflict, calling on Russia and Ukraine to come to the negotiating table, although Guterres said now was not the right time.
Lula and Biden’s speeches served to warm up the engines before the intervention of President Zelensky, who addressed the UN General Assembly in person for the first time. Last year he did it exceptionally via video message.
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