As I write, hundreds of world leaders are on their way to New York for the opening of the 79th United Nations General Assembly. This is always one of the most important moments in international diplomacy, and this week will be no different.
For today’s newsletter, I want to share some of the stories I believe will drive the agenda in New York during what is known as “High-Level Week” at the UN. This includes two substantive meetings that are not likely to get the attention they deserve: one on antimicrobial resistance and another on sea-level rise. We discuss these topics extensively in the Global Dispatches podcast episode published today
For now, I’d like to offer my own take on the stories I’ll be following most closely this week.
On Sunday and Monday, leaders are gathering for the Summit of the Future, which is the culmination of years of discussions on how to make the UN—and multilateralism more broadly—more responsive to future global challenges. However, the entire summit came perilously close to falling apart at the last minute.
Here’s what happened: since February, countries have been discussing and debating what should be included in the main outcome document of the Summit of the Future, known as the Pact for the Future. Diplomats have gone line-by-line through this text, hammering out compromises while keeping it as aspirational as possible. As of mid-week last week, it appeared that they had agreed on a final draft. But then Russia “broke silence,” raising an objection to a text that nearly everyone believed was a done deal. Russia introduced an amendment to the text, which was widely seen around the UN as a transparent attempt to weaken the Pact for the Future.
This threw the negotiations into a frenzy. A text had to be agreed upon by Sunday morning when the General Assembly was scheduled to meet for a vote enshrining the Pact for the Future as the kick-off event to the Summit of the Future.
“At the last minute, Russia proposed an amendment that had not been raised during these months-long negotiations, essentially throwing a wrench in the process to block the pact at the 11th hour,” says Minh-Thu Phan, a longtime UN watcher and CEO of Project Starling.
What happened next was both procedurally and geopolitically interesting. At this late stage, Russia disparaged the entire Summit of the Future process, claiming it was some sort of imperialist, Western project. But that is transparently not the case—and everyone in the General Assembly hall knew it. In fact, the final draft of the Pact was agreed upon after Pakistan, negotiating on behalf of 20 “like-minded” countries, successfully secured text it believed firmly advanced the interests of the developing world.
On Sunday morning, as delegates gathered to vote on the Pact for the Future, Russia sought to introduce its poison-pill amendment. But rather than hold a divisive vote on this amendment, The Republic of Congo stood up with its own proposal: to evade the Russian amendment altogether and instead vote on a motion to proceed. This was significant because Congo is the rotating head of the African Union—not exactly a Western imperialist institution! Congo’s procedural craftsmanship led to a lopsided vote of 143-7, with 15 abstentions. (The seven against: Russia, Iran, Belarus, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan.) Russia’s proposal was duly ignored.
Moments after the vote concluded, the President of the General Assembly called for a vote by acclamation to adopt the Pact for the Future. The room erupted in applause soon after. No country (including Russia) raised any formal objections at this point. The Pact for the Future was therefore adopted, and by consensus.
The relief was palpable, both in the room and among civil society members who had been part of this process every step of the way. “If politics is the art of the attainable, I would say a lot has been attained under very challenging circumstances and in a very unforgiving climate,” says Joris Larik, Assistant Professor at Leiden University and Senior Advisor at the Stimson Center.
This UNGA also comes at a time of major global crises, with most of the attention currently focused on the Middle East. Over on To Save Us From Hell, our sister podcast about the UN, I quipped to my co-host Anjali Dayal that the tone of UNGA will likely be set by whatever happens the day before in the Middle East.
Needless to say, we are in the midst of an escalating series of provocations between Israel and Hezbollah. (Last week, I wrote extensively about what it means that UNGA may be taking place as a wider regional war erupts in the Middle East.) Expect speeches from Netanyahu and Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, to draw considerable attention. There will be a Security Council meeting on this crisis on Friday, which notably was not even on the Council’s schedule as of last week.
A meeting on Ukraine has long been on the Security Council’s agenda this coming week, on Tuesday afternoon. I would expect Biden to attend, given that the meeting is scheduled following his farewell UNGA address that morning. Don’t expect any major outcomes from this meeting, but do expect sparks. I imagine Zelenskyy will attend, as well as a representative from Russia.
The third crisis top of mind for many diplomats this week is Sudan. This is currently the largest humanitarian catastrophe by the numbers, and the UN continues to issue warnings of a growing food and famine crisis. Notably, one of the generals involved in this war, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is also the titular head of state. He’ll be addressing UNGA, and I expect his speech will be cringeworthy, to say the least. There will be side events on Sudan, potentially including extra scrutiny on the United Arab Emirates’ role in fueling this conflict. On Saturday, Christoph Koettl and Declan Walsh of The New York Times published a blockbuster story detailing the UAE’s support of a genocidal militia on the other side of the civil war from General Burhan.
This week is also something of a Joe Biden foreign policy farewell tour. The American president’s participation at UNGA typically follows a familiar pattern: he’ll be the second speaker on Tuesday morning, after which he’ll host a luncheon for world leaders in his capacity as President of the UN’s host country. Biden will also hold several bi-laterals, and probably hold a press conference. I would expect his General Assembly address to be something of a foreign policy valedictory speech, though he will also certainly advance a rather detailed plan for reforming the UN Security Council.
During UNGA, there are always some genuinely important but often overlooked meetings that don’t get the attention they deserve, despite their potential impact. These are substantive meetings on particular topics held under the rubric of a so-called High-Level Meeting. Months, and sometimes years, of diplomacy precede these meetings, and they often deliver concrete outcomes. This year, there are two such meetings to highlight: a High-Level Meeting on antimicrobial resistance and one on the consequences of sea-level rise. For today’s Global Dispatches podcast episode, I’m joined first by Dr. Ahmed Ogwell, Vice President of Global Health Strategy at the UN Foundation, who tells us what to expect from the high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance on the 25th. Then, I’ll be joined by Kerrlene Wills, the Director for Ocean and Climate at the UN Foundation, who will discuss the summit on sea-level rise.
These two meetings may fly under the radar, but they are genuinely important for advancing cooperative solutions to some great global challenges—and improving the lives of people around the world. These meetings are often the best of UNGA—and why I still have hope that the UN can be a platform to advance the common global good.
You can find the episode here. And you can find me scrambling around New York this week! Feel free to contact me if you want to connect. Seriously, I’d love to meet you.