The theme that led last year’s session of the General Assembly was ‘Rebuilding trust and reigniting global solidarity: Accelerating action on the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals towards peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability for all’. A theme that concentrated on the all-encompassing, comprehensive document that was the 2030 Agenda had come as no surprise. As the European Parliament’s analysts rightly pointed out, the 2023 High-Level Opening of the General Assembly in New York took place at a point of an almost unprecedented time of wide-ranging crises, both in the geographic and thematic sense. Among them: military conflicts (including often-overlooked coup d’états in Western Africa, but also the still-soaring war in Ukraine, for example), food and health insecurity, climate change crisis and the rising danger of the conflict over scarce resources that come from that, persisting inequality (between countries, genders, skin tones, social classes and religious affiliations, among others) and the problems in implementing sustainable development solutions worldwide. 78th session of the General Assembly marked the half-point until the deadline set for implementing the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, so it is clear that the UN Secretariat officials, with the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wanted to underscore the importance of the documents, as well as stress the significance of meaningful dialogue about the solutions implemented on the way of fulfilling the goals, one that could be achieved in the UN halls. Even with the ongoing criticism of UN bodies being unable to offer binding or quick solutions, the General Assembly provided crucial opportunities for the world leaders to meet and discuss their ideas in private or in front of the wider forum of diplomats, politicians and millions of observers around the world.
The expectations were high, and preparations months-underway when the High-Level Week started. The UN Women, for example, had prepared the Generation Equality Midpoint Moment, an event designed to help review the status of the implementation of both the Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. What came out of the 78th session of the General Assembly, then? The first source to look for the reflections coming from the finished session are the closing remarks by the President of the General Assembly Dennis Francis. The UN Women officials may perhaps be proud, seeing the Advisory Board on Gender Equality reestablished. President Francis also mentioned the General Assembly’s success in establishing a successful gender parity system among speakers and panellists at GA meetings. The President also paid visits to 31 countries, interacting with civil society leaders, students, interest groups and others. In his last speech, he underscored his actions aimed at helping underrepresented countries, such as those in the Least Developed Countries group, as well as the Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States – no wonder, since he himself was chosen by the government of Trinidad and Tobago. As the SDG Knowledge Hub website outlines, the main achievements of the 78th session of the General Assembly were: the adoption of the outcomes of the SDG Summit, as well as the High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development, and finally – political declarations on health-focused issues such as universal health coverage, pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, and the handling of the tuberculosis crisis. The main project of Mr Francis’s presidency, however, he said to be the UNGA Sustainability Week. The project was aimed at preparing the Member States of the UN for the Summit of the Future.
However, there were also many points of criticism of the outcomes of the 78th session. The International Service for Human Rights lists some of them. Among them – a problem that has been shadowing the UN since the very beginning of its existence: the lack of universal support for the resolutions and projects. In particular, the resolution on strengthening the role of the UN in the promotion of democratisation and enhancing periodic and genuine elections, focusing on media freedom and freedom of expression, while adopted with a significant majority, broke consensus among the Member States. Another point of criticism was that some resolutions such as the one on terrorism and human rights did not bring anything new to the table, but were rather “technical rollovers” from previous sessions of the General Assembly. Finally, critics also pointed out the fact that some issues had been overlooked altogether. For instance, in the resolution on policies and Programmes Involving Youth, an agreed language on sexual and reproductive health and rights, menstrual hygiene management, marginalised persons and situations, comprehensive sexuality education, as well as references to adolescents from the previous resolution were not found in the final version.
Overall, it may be pointed out that while the 78th session of the General Assembly achieved significant results and saw some important projects and resolutions being established, many of its outcomes or points of debates may be also described in three words: controversial, repeated, and incomplete. How in this context does the newly-opened 79th session of the General Assembly look?
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‘Unity and diversity for advancing peace, sustainable development and human dignity, everywhere and for all’ – that is the current theme of the General Assembly. The theme underscores the importance to the new President of the UNGA of issues such as resolving conflicts and crises around the world, fighting against climate change, as well as supporting equality among nations. The President of the General Assembly became his Excellency Philemon Yang from Cameroon, representing the African region. Mr Yang has had experience in many forms of political activity. Among other roles, he was the Head of Government of Cameroon between 2009 and 2019. He was also High Commissioner to Canada until 2004, where he gained diplomatic experience. In the UN, he was Chair of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. It may be expected that as the President of the General Assembly, Mr Yang will bring vast experience of his positions to the table, and include numerous stakeholders from many areas of expertise. In his vision statement, the President outlined eight key points of focus for the General Assembly: promotion of sustained economic growth and sustainable development in accordance with the relevant resolutions of the Assembly and United Nations conferences; maintenance of international peace and security: development in Africa; promotion of human rights; effective coordination of humanitarian assistance; promotion of justice and international law; disarmament; and drug control, crime prevention and combating international terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Similarly to the previous President Dennis Francis, Mr Yang also underlined the importance of supporting the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States. He also expects to focus on helping in the development of his own region, Africa, in projects such as “Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want”. The new President both calls for new solutions and sustaining traditional ones. For example, during his term, he “will stress the need for faster action on the measures to be taken by the General Assembly to ensure the effective implementation of mutual commitments”. On the other hand, he also plans to continue the work of the previous Presidents in areas such as the revitalisation of the work of the Assembly.
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It is worth asking a question – is this going to be a breakthrough year for the General Assembly? Are the goals established by this year’s President going to finally be fulfilled?
The answer probably will be – depends on the area. For example, one of the main points made by the UN Women officials in their preparations for the Generation Equality Midpoint Moment event was the fact that still an astonishingly small number of gender-related SDGs have been fulfilled. Still, the Gender Equality point of the SDGs is at the more positive side across all of the points. Conversely, Zero Hunger and Good Health and Wellbeing points show signs of stagnation and remain at the “Major challenges” level. With the bureaucracy still holding a grip on the UN structures, it will be hard for an official even as experienced as Mr Yang to fulfil such high expectations.
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