The United Nations General Assembly began its seventy-eighth annual session in New York City on September 5. The session will continue through the end of the year. The first two weeks are known as the “High Level” sessions, this year bringing together leaders from 191 countries to address the body on various topics.
Similar to last year, discussions at the General Assembly include what role the United Nations and its members should play in the crisis in Ukraine. The United States and its allies still insist that the U.N. Charter requires countries to take Ukraine’s side in the conflict, “for as long as it takes” to restore Ukraine’s pre-2014 internationally recognized borders.
National Archives/Public domain
Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations, 1945.
They claim to be enforcing Article 2:4, which states, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
By their reasoning, Russia violated this rule by invading Ukraine, making any compromise or negotiated settlement unconscionable, regardless of the consequences of prolonging the war.
Other countries have called for a peaceful diplomatic resolution based on Article 2:3: “All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.”
They also refer to the purposes of the United Nations, defined in Article 1:1, which includes the “settlement of international disputes” by “peaceful means,” and point to the dangers of escalation and nuclear war as an imperative for diplomacy to quickly end this war.
As the Amir of Qatar told the Assembly, “A long-term truce has become the most looked-for aspiration by people in Europe and all over the world. We call on all parties to comply with the U.N. Charter and international law and resort to a radical peaceful solution based on these principles.”
The U.N. General Assembly has also been focused on other facets of a world in crisis including the failure to tackle the climate catastrophe.
The General Assembly has also been focused on other facets of a world in crisis: the failure to tackle the climate catastrophe; the lack of progress on the Sustainable Development Goals that countries agreed to in 2000; a neocolonial economic system that still divides the world into rich and poor; and the desperate need for structural reform of a U.N. Security Council that has failed in its basic responsibility to keep the peace and prevent war.
One speaker after another highlighted the persistent problems related to U.S. and Western abuses of power: the occupation of Palestine; cruel, illegal U.S. sanctions against Cuba and many other countries; Western exploitation of Africa that has evolved from slavery to debt servitude and neocolonialism; and a global financial system that exacerbates extreme inequalities of wealth and power across the world.
Palácio do Planalto from Brasilia, Brasil, CC BY 2.0
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during a meeting with Colombian President Gustavo Petro in Brasilia, Brazil, May 2023.
Brazil, by tradition, gives the first speech at the General Assembly, and President Lula da Silva spoke eloquently about the crises facing the United Nations and the world. Regarding Ukraine, he said, “The war in Ukraine exposes our collective inability to enforce the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter. . . . The U.N. was born to be the home of understanding and dialogue. The international community must choose. On one hand, there is the expansion of conflicts, the furthering of inequalities and the erosion of the rule of law. On the other, the renewing of multilateral institutions dedicated to promoting peace.”
After a lackluster speech by President Joe Biden, Latin America again took the stage when President Gustavo Petro of Colombia spoke up:
The White House, Public domain
President Joe Biden speaks at the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 19, 2023.
“While the minutes that define life or death on our planet are ticking on,” Petro declared, “rather than halting this march of time and talking about how to defend life for the future…we decided to waste time killing each other. We are not thinking about how to expand life to the stars, but rather how to end life on our own planet. We have devoted ourselves to war. We have been called to war. Latin America has been called upon to produce war machines, men, to go to the killing fields.
“They’re forgetting that our countries have been invaded several times by the very same people who are now talking about combatting invasions. They’re forgetting that they invaded Iraq, Syria and Libya for oil. They’re forgetting that the same reasons they use to defend Zelenskyy are the very reasons that should be used to defend Palestine. They forget that to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, we must end all wars.
“I propose that the United Nations, as soon as possible, should hold two peace conferences, one on Ukraine, the other on Palestine, not because there are no other wars in the world - there are in my country - but because this would guide the way to making peace in all regions of the planet, because both of these, by themselves, could bring an end to hypocrisy as a political practice, because we could be sincere, a virtue without which we cannot be warriors for life itself.”
Petro was not the only leader who upheld the value of sincerity and assailed the hypocrisy of Western diplomacy. Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines cut to the chase:
“Let us clear certain ideational cobwebs from our brains. It is, for example, wholly unhelpful to frame the central contradictions of our troubled times as revolving around a struggle between democracies and autocracies. St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a strong liberal democracy, rejects this wrong-headed thesis. It is evident to all right-thinking persons, devoid of self-serving hypocrisy, that the struggle today between the dominant powers is centered upon the control, ownership, and distribution of the world’s resources.”
“Let us clear certain ideational cobwebs from our brains. It is, for example, wholly unhelpful to frame the central contradictions of our troubled times as revolving around a struggle between democracies and autocracies.”—Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves
On the war in Ukraine, Gonsalves was equally blunt. “. . . War and conflict rage senselessly across the globe; in at least one case, Ukraine, the principal adversaries—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia—may unwittingly open the gates to a nuclear Armageddon . . . Russia, NATO, and Ukraine should embrace peace, not war and conflict, even if peace has to rest upon a mutually agreed, settled condition of dissatisfaction.”
Even with wars, drought, debt, and poverty afflicting their own continent, at least seventeen African leaders called for peace in Ukraine. Some voiced their support for the African Peace Initiative, the effort by seven African nations to mediate the conflict, while others contrasted the West’s commitments and expenditures for the war in Ukraine with its endemic neglect of Africa’s problems. President Joao Lourenço of Angola explained why peace in Ukraine remains a vital interest for Africa and people everywhere:
“In Europe, the war between Russia and Ukraine deserves our full attention to the urgent need to put an immediate end to it, given the levels of human and material destruction there, the risk of an escalation into a major conflict on a global scale and the impact of its harmful effects on energy and food security.”
Altogether, leaders from at least fifty countries spoke up for peace in Ukraine.
Altogether, leaders from at least fifty countries spoke up for peace in Ukraine. In his closing statement, Dennis Francis, the Trinidadian president of this year’s General Assembly, noted,
“Of the topics raised during the High-Level Week, few were as frequent, consistent, or as charged as that of the Ukraine War. The international community is clear that political independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity must be respected, and violence must end.”
You can find all fifty statements at this link on the CODEPINK website.