United Nations General Assembly 2024: Overshadowed amongst the fog of war

Jake Canton Perry, Junior Consultant
09/10/2024

With conflict and unrest dominating the global conversation, from Ukraine to the Middle East to Sudan and Myanmar to name but a few, the United Nations General Assembly met for its annual conference facing an array of global challenges. UN officials had hoped it would be an opportunity for the international community to regroup and gather to address issues such as climate change, peacebuilding and health security. Instead, delegates ended up storming out of the chamber, while others threatened nuclear war.

It was a sombre turn from a gathering that held much hope for the future of the planet. Organised just before the General Assembly, the Summit of the Future launched the Pact for the Future. A culmination of nine months of negotiations between representatives, it was meant to re-emphasise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and bring them back on target for 2030. UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, pitched it as an opportunity “to bring multiculturalism back from the brink.” The President of the General Assembly, Philemon Yang, stated the pact would “lay the foundations for a sustainable, just, and peaceful global order – for all peoples and nations.”

On the agenda, for the second time in the UN’s history, was addressing the global threat of anti-microbial resistance (AMR). It is an issue that has led to a million deaths each year since 1990 and is projected to total 39 million between 2025 and 2030. As the issue exacerbates, we will likely begin to see further multilateral announcements from the UN on efforts to combat its spread. Already, the business and the third sector, in the instance of Cepheid and the Fleming Initiative, have reacted to AMR’s prominence by announcing partnerships aimed at providing real-world solutions to this global problem.

Yet, despite these instances of collaboration and examples of the benefit of multilateralism, the gathering was quickly overshadowed by escalating global crises. Russia’s war in Ukraine, ongoing violence in the Middle East, and escalating tensions in other regions dominated the discussions and media coverage. The ripple effects of these conflicts, including global economic instability, migration challenges, and disruptions in food and energy supplies, were at the forefront of many leaders’ speeches.

Unexpectedly, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, used his speech to the Assembly to warn those who try “to fight to victory with a nuclear power,” while President Zelenskyy reminded the Assembly of the war crimes committed by invading Russian forces. Meanwhile, Masoud Pezeshkian, President of Iran, described the current Western sanctions against his country as “destructive and inhumane” and President Biden praised the diplomatic efforts of Qatar and Egypt towards securing a ceasefire in the Middle East.

Yet these speeches, and almost the entirety of UNGA, were all overshadowed by Prime Minister Netanyahu. After having spoken to an almost empty Assembly, following the walk-out protest by numerous delegates, he was pictured approving the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, then Secretary-General of Hezbollah. This action signalled the escalation of conflict in the Middle East, leading to a ground invasion of Lebanon by Israeli troops and the launching of Iranian ballistic missiles at Israel itself.

These crises tested the resilience of the UN’s capacity to unite nations in times of trouble. Countries called for immediate responses to these emergencies, often drawing attention away from the more long-term, structural reforms discussed at the Summit of the Future. More damagingly, they strained diplomatic ties between major global powers, leading to renewed divisions, side-taking and the testing of multilateralism in the 21st century.

The emphasis on the here-and-now challenges epitomises the difficulty the UN faces. How can it balance urgent responses to immediate crises while also working toward longer-term solutions for systemic issues? It is a problem that reflects the complexity of modern-day multilateral diplomacy, where collective action on future threats is often sidelined by the need for immediate action on current conflicts.

This is where the wheel starts again and the discussion on the United Nation’s future raises its head. Since its formation in 1945, the United Nations has achieved a level of global peace and prosperity once dreamed of by Christian monks. Not only did it help prevent Cold War nuclear armageddon, but the Universal Declaration of Human Rights laid a benchmark for how people deserved to live, and the Millennium Development Goals brought half a billion people out of extreme poverty.

However, the United States, one of the founding members of the United Nations and the ‘global policeman of the UN,’ is waning in influence. Instead, regional powers are emerging and beginning to find that the multilateral ideals of the United Nations conflict with their strategic interests.

There is a long list of issues that the global order and the United Nations need to tackle. Climate change, the rise of AI and big data, as well as global health will not be solved unilaterally. Only together can nations gather and discuss, as they initially did to create the Washington Consensus, to forge a new peaceful and sustainable world order. That vision, however, is currently obscured by a thick fog of war.