76th UNGA session starts in New York
The United Nations
General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday opened its 76th session, with the UNGA
president and the UN chief imploring member states to embrace hope and
strengthen unity after a challenging year of climate disasters, conflict, and
COVID-19.
"It has been a tragic and
challenging year, but this is a new session," said President of the 76th
UNGA session Abdulla Shahid. "We can fall back on the comfort and
predictability of systems and procedures, of the United Nations machinery that
fills our days, or we can choose to push forward and turn the page. We can
choose to write a new chapter."
"Let us choose the latter; let
us dare to dream and let us dare to hope, to embrace the presidency of
hope," said Shahid.
Highlighting the challenges ahead,
he said that hundreds of millions have fallen ill, millions died, and billions
suffered from the pandemic, with news arriving daily to ignite the world's
collective anxiety about climate change, disasters, conflict and instability.
"The narrative must change, and
we must be initiator for that change; the General Assembly must play a part of
this," he said, emphasizing that the United Nations is as relevant today
as it was 76 years ago.
Declaring that he embraced hope as
the theme of his presidency, he said, "While the pandemic unleashed an
unprecedented crisis, we have witnessed incredible acts of kindness and
compassion, acts that reaffirmed our common humanity and collective strength as
'nations united.' This is the narrative we must tell."
Listing five rays of hope that will
shape the 76th session's agenda, he said vaccinating the world is the top
priority.
"By any measure, this has been
the most challenging period facing the world since the Second World War,"
said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in his remarks delivered at the
closing of the 75th UNGA, which was followed immediately by the opening of the
76th session.
However, the international community
can overcome all these challenges "by working as one," the
secretary-general noted.
On COVID-19, the top UN official
said that the pandemic has deepened inequalities, decimated economies at the
global, national and household levels, plunged millions into extreme poverty,
shattered support systems and unraveled decades of hard-won development
progress.
"This devastation has played
out against the backdrop of ferocious conflicts and natural disasters that are
putting millions of lives in jeopardy every day," said Guterres, adding
that a climate emergency is "literally setting our planet on fire."
Addressing the opening of the 76th
UNGA session, the UN chief said that "it's time to focus on fighting
humanity's common enemy: the pandemic."
"We need to speed up our
response to COVID-19, with vaccines, treatment and equipment for all -- not
only those with the most," the secretary-general added.
"We need countries to commit
and live up to bold climate targets at COP26 in Glasgow," the top UN
official added. "The war on our planet must end."
Noting that "we meet at a
moment of great challenge and division," the secretary-general said that
these challenges facing the world "are worsened by the divisions scarring
our world," divisions "between the rich and (the) poor, between those
who take basic services for granted -- nutrition, running water, accessible
health care -- and those for whom these essentials remain a distant
dream"; divisions between those with a seat in a classroom and skills to
build a better future and those who lost such opportunities because of poverty
or their gender, and "divisions between those able to access life-saving
COVID-19 vaccines and those who cannot."
"These challenges and divisions
are not a force of nature," he said, "They are man-made."
The divisions "are made by
economic systems stacked against the poorest and most vulnerable; by unchecked
greed that is destroying our planet; by the lingering scars of colonialism that
have never fully healed and by thirst for political and ideological dominance
that fuels social unrest, mistrust, terrorism and armed conflicts," the UN
chief continued.
These challenges and divisions can
be corrected "if we unite behind our work here in this chamber and gather
around the spirit of multilateralism," added the secretary-general.
President of the 75th UNGA session
Volkan Bozkir called for redoubling efforts to implement the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), while expressing concern that the 2030 deadline might
be missed.
Noting that the SDGs represent a
blueprint for peace and prosperity, for people and the planet, for now and into
the future, and implementing these goals will help protect the international
community against future catastrophes, he warned that "with the trajectory
we are on, we are going to miss the 2030 deadline."
"This Assembly and you -- the
member states who make up the United Nations -- must redouble efforts to
implement the SDGs," Bozkir said at the closing of the 75th UNGA session.
On multilateralism, the veteran
Turkish diplomat said, "We must strengthen and unite behind the
multilateral system."
"Our world is increasingly
globalized, interconnected and interdependent. As such, nationalistic solutions
will not resolve our challenges," he stressed.