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The headquarters of United Nations is pictured in New York on Aug. 1, 2022.
The week that was: 5 key takeaways from UNGA 2024
GZERO was on the ground at UN headquarters in Manhattan all last week as the General Assembly discussed the most pressing issues affecting the world. It was quite a whirlwind, but here are the broad strokes of what went down:
- Israel expresses defiance. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an intense speech on Friday defending his country’s military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon. His remarks came the day after Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbascondemned Israel for “launching wars of genocide” and Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib called on Tel Aviv to halt its strikes on his country. Efforts to forge a Lebanon cease-fire on the sidelines of the UNGA came to naught.
- Ukraine presents a “victory plan.” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky came to New York with a very different attitude toward his country’s conflict. He asked his allies to give him the weapons — and the permissions — he needed to inflict damage deep behind Russian lines. US President Joe Biden used his speech to urge Ukraine’s allies to continue their support, asking those whose enthusiasm is flagging, “Will we walk away and let a nation be destroyed?”
- Time for a new Security Council? The UN’s most powerful body was organized during a very different time in global politics, and the lack of permanent representatives from Africa, Latin America, or Asia has eroded the UNSC’s credibility. Secretary-General António Guterres said now is the time to bring an African country onto the body, and Liberian Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti told GZERO’s John Haltiwanger doing so would bring perspectives that are too often ignored at the upper echelons of the international community.
- AI, oh my! GZERO’s very own Ian Bremmer was part of the body that released the first report to outline a truly global approach to the challenges posed by AI. The report asked the UN to begin working on a “globally inclusive” system for AI governance, called on governments and stakeholders to develop AI in a way that protects human rights, and made seven recommendations. More here.
- GZERO also organized a Global Stage livestream in coordination with the UN’s Complex Risk Analytics Fund (CRAF’d) entitled “Live from the United Nations: Securing Our Digital Future,”bringing together experts from across industry and government, including International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and Czech President Petr Pavel, to discuss the best direction for this revolutionary technology.
Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati speaks at the United Nations Security Council meeting on the escalation in fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah during the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 25, 2024.
Israel lays the groundwork for ground war, denies reports of imminent cease-fire
UNITED NATIONS – Israel appeared to be inching closer to a ground invasion of Lebanon on Wednesday after the army called up reservists while top brass told troops the wave of recent Israeli airstrikes was meant to “clear the ground for your possible entry.”
In response to those attacks, which killed hundreds, Hezbollah on Tuesday fired a ballistic missile that reached as far as Tel Aviv, where air defenses shot it down.
Meanwhile, in UN Security Council on Wednesday, the US and France worked to broker a 21-day Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire. During the debate, the US was in lockstep with Israel’s belief that it has the right to defend itself against Hezbollah. Washington blamed the situation on Hezbollah’s “decision to break the peace” by firing rockets into Israel the day after the Oct. 7 attack. Israel echoed that defending itself was something “any country would do.”
Lebanon called for an “immediate cease-fire” because it “cannot afford to lose another generation to war” but said it would only agree if Israel withdrew from occupied territory and ended the war in Gaza.
Iran, Syria, and Egypt all warned that a ground invasion of Lebanon would spiral into a wider regional war. They blamed the US and UK for being “enablers” of Israel’s escalatory actions and said they were rendering the Security Council ineffective.
An Israeli invasion would mean a major escalation in its fighting with Hezbollah. The two sides have so far traded blows from the sky since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Invading Lebanon would be a gamble – Iran-backed Hezbollah is much stronger than Hamas, and a wider war could draw in Iran or locally deployed US forces. Israel, meanwhile, has yet to meet its stated goals of freeing the remaining hostages in Gaza and destroying Hamas.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, still embarrassed by the security failures of Oct. 7, has pledged to secure the north, where tens of thousands of Israelis have been evacuated from their homes due to Hezbollah rocket fire. And despite efforts to broker a cease-fire – the PM said reports of an imminent deal were false – his office said early Thursday that Netanyahu had instructed Israel's military to keep fighting “with full force.”
Hezbollah too has threatened a wider war, but a full-blown conflict with Israel could entail immense pain for a Lebanon already reeling from years of economic crisis.
Guterres: Now is the time for UN Security Council reform
For years, meaningful reform of the UN Security Council was considered an impossible pipe dream that could never happen. But with so many ongoing global crises, now is the time to reform institutions to meet the political and economic realities of today's world. On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, UN Secretary-General António Guterres says he’s most concerned with a lack of accountability, growing impunity, and countries fragmenting further into coalitions and blocs, which is at odds with everything the UN stands for. The world has changed dramatically since the UN was formed in 1945, and it's time to reform outdated, unfair institutions, like the Security Council, that concentrate power in the hands of a few wealthy countries and don't reflect current reality. Guterres says giving an African country a permanent seat on the Council “must be done,” but admits extending veto power to an African member will be a major challenge.
“The African situation, it is in historic injustice,” Guterres explains, “For the first time, the five permanent members recognize that they are ready to accept at least an African permanent member in the Security Council.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
- Podcast: UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Russia, human rights, & the Security Council presidency ›
- Ian Explains: Why Russia has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council ›
- 4 things to know about the Munich Security Conference ›
- Zelensky takes aim at the UN Security Council - GZERO Media ›
- UN Security Council: Liberia’s top diplomat joins calls for Africa’s representation - GZERO Media ›
US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Greenfield-Thomas addresses a meeting of the Security Council as they consider a US-sponsored resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, on March 22, 2024.
China and Russia veto US cease-fire resolution for Gaza
Yet another Gaza cease-fire resolution failed in the UN Security Council today – though the US was not responsible for blocking it this time. China and Russia vetoed a US-sponsored resolution urging for “an immediate and sustained cease-fire” in the Israel-Hamas war in connection with a hostage deal.
Beijing and Moscow’s ambassadors seemingly took issue with the language of the resolution, contending it didn’t go far enough to demand a cease-fire. The US resolution “sets up conditions for a ceasefire, which is no different from giving a green light to continued killings, which is unacceptable,” said Zhang Jun, China’s ambassador to the UN.
Russia's ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said Moscow supported a cease-fire but decried the US resolution as a “hypocritical spectacle.” Nebenzia said it was “exceedingly politicized … to help to play to the voters, to throw them a bone in the form of some kind of a mention of a cease-fire in Gaza.”
The US, Israel’s top ally, previously vetoed three cease-fire resolutions. The latest resolution signaled a shift in Washington’s stance on the war, as the Biden administration faces domestic pressure over its support for Israel and butts heads with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over plans to invade Rafah – a city filled with displaced Palestinians.
Playing politics? The US accused Russia and China, two of its top adversaries, of tanking the resolution for political reasons. "Russia and China simply did not want to vote for a resolution that was penned by the United States,” said US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
What’s next? Elected members of the UNSC have penned an alternative resolution that demands an immediate cease-fire, which could be brought to a vote on Friday afternoon. The US has signaled it will block the measure.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Israel on Friday as part of ongoing efforts to secure a new truce. Netanyahu remained defiant during the visit, telling Blinken that Israel can't defeat Hamas without going into Rafah and that it will move forward with the operation without US support if necessary.
No place worse for women than Taliban's Afghanistan, says UN human rights chief
When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, there was some hope that they would reformed. Now it's clear they have not changed a bit.
And nowhere is that more obvious than in the Taliban's abominable treatment of women.
“There is no country in the world that treats women in the way that Afghanistan does and the Taliban do,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World, on the ground in Davos.
So, what can we do about it? Türk calls for "a unified stance that this is not part of the international order."
Watch the GZERO World episode: Russia's tragic brutality and the humbling of the West
The UN turns 75 — is it still relevant?
This Friday marks 75 years since the signing of the United Nations charter, a document that established the biggest and longest-lived experiment in global political cooperation in modern history.
But the organization celebrates this milestone at a time of uncertainty about whether it is still fit for purpose in the 21st century — and not only because of the critical global challenge of the coronavirus pandemic.
First, the good news. The UN has much to be proud of. Its programs help hundreds of millions of people to ward off hunger, poverty, and violence. It's the leading platform for the fight against climate change and its refugee agencies care for almost 60 million of the most vulnerable people around the world. UN observers help to ensure free and fair elections, and its peacekeepers intervene where few countries would do so alone. And without the Non-Proliferation Treaty, many more countries today would have deadly nuclear weapons.
But on the other hand, it's hard to think of a major international crisis that the UN Security Council — the UN's most powerful body — has resolved since the 1991 Gulf War. The Council is too often a stage for rivals like the US, Russia and China to simply veto each other's initiatives. It was unable to prevent genocides in Rwanda, Darfur and more recently Myanmar, and powerless to restrain the 2003 US invasion of Iraq or Russia's annexation of Crimea a decade later. It did almost nothing on Syria.
So here are three big questions that the UN will need to resolve in the coming years.
First, does power at the UN reflect today's world? In some ways, the organization is still stuck in 1945: France and the UK remain permanent members of the Security Council, which has only one permanent member from Asia (China), and none from Africa the Middle East or Latin America.
Second, who's going to pay for the UN? The UN's regular budget is covered by mandatory contributions from all member states, but most UN agencies rely on voluntary contributions. This discretionary funding was already at high risk, and it's likely to decline even more as coronavirus clobbers national budgets. UN agencies will have to find the money elsewhere.
Third, will COVID-19 help or hurt the UN? On the one hand, a global public health crisis underscores the importance of precisely the kind of international cooperation that the UN is meant to foster. And as the pandemic deepens throughout the developing world, the UN will play a big role in managing the twin public health and economic impacts there.
However, the coronavirus is also heightening major countries' inclination to turn inward. The US, in a deepening rivalry with China, has already cut funding for the World Health Organization — a UN agency — over complaints that it's too cozy with Beijing. Will the pandemic and its aftermath empower political forces that favor cooperation or nationalism?
Happy Birthday, but… Three-quarters of a century on from its founding, the United Nations is at a potentially major turning point. As they blow out those 75 candles, what should the UN wish for?