“People are looking to their leaders for a way out of this mess,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said ahead of the annual gathering of presidents and premiers, ministers and monarchs at the General Assembly.
“Yet in the face of all this and more,” Guterres said, “geopolitical divisions are undermining our capacity to respond.”This year’s week-long session, the first full-on meeting of world leaders since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted travel, has 145 leaders scheduled to speak.
The G77, the major U.N. group of developing countries that now has 134 members including China, lobbied hard to make this year’s global gathering focus on the 17 U.N. goals adopted by world leaders in 2015.
At a two-day summit to kick-start action to achieve the goals, Guterres pointed to grim findings in a U.N. report in July.
At the summit, leaders were then supposed to make pledges to meet the SDGs.
Persons:
Antonio Guterres, ” Guterres, Joe Biden, Xi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Rishi Sunak, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Biden, Guterres, “, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Josep Borrell, ” Borrell
Organizations:
UNITED NATIONS, —, General, . Security Council, Nepal’s, EU, Arab League
Locations:
China, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Brussels