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As high-level meetings for a new session of the UN General Assembly open in New York, the UN is in search of a leader and in desperate need of rejuvenation.
Humanitarian issues aren’t usually the main focus during the politics and pageantry of high-level week, when world leaders and entourages add an extra snarl to midtown Manhattan, and the rank-and-file network and nibble on finger food. But global crises are spiralling, and humanitarians will be looking for stronger political consensus to address them – as well as for financial backing of the depleted emergency response ecosystem.
The UNGA summits will try to use public gatherings and closed-door meetings to focus attention on multilateralism in a me-first era, respect for international law, the climate crisis, or the governance of artificial intelligence. But those with power and the loudest voices still set the agenda, whether through vetoes, funding, policy pressure, or military might.
Here are five issues in and out of the spotlight:
Who will lead the UN?
The race-walk to pick a new secretary-general is the thread running through most questions on the UN’s future. The successor to current SG António Guterres will be expected to revitalise multilateralism, leverage diplomacy to end wars, guide UN renewal in a time of deep cuts and scepticism, and hack a new path to relevance for a beleaguered world body – easy, right?
The selection of the secretary-general could be an opportunity to galvanise public attention, but instead the process has been conducted with typical opaqueness.
Technically, the world’s member states in the General Assembly appoint the secretary-general. But they can only choose from candidates selected by the Security Council, which has invariably presented a single name, despite appeals to open up the process.
Preliminary voting has so far been through closed-door straw polls, where the 15 UN Security Council members cast votes to “encourage” or “discourage” a candidacy (or offer “no opinion”). The results are not officially released, but quickly leaked by council members to be analysed by keen UN watchers and media.
Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica, head of the UN’s trade and development arm, UNCTAD, received the most “encourage” votes in a third poll held last week, but also five “discourage” votes. Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, Guyana’s permanent representative to the UN and a former foreign minister, received eight “encourage” votes and six “discourage”. It’s not clear whether the negative votes include any of the so-called P5 – permanent members China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – whose veto power gives them outsized power to quash any candidate.
The UN has never had a woman secretary-general in its 80-year history.
The race saw two new candidates join just before the third straw poll. Other candidates may emerge if they can drum up backroom support. Notably, they’re unlikely to face public questions from the General Assembly – the bare minimum element of nominal transparency in the process. With no clear front-runner at this stage, some analysts warn of the consequences of not choosing a new secretary-general before Guterres’s term ends on 31 December.
Michelle Bachelet of Chile, a two-time president as well as the UN’s former human rights chief, withdrew from the race after the third straw poll. The next secretary-general must be a woman, from Latin America, independent, and prepared to uphold UN charter principles “before all states, regardless of their size or power”, Bachelet said in an Instagram post.
The UN has never had a woman secretary-general in its 80-year history.
Crises simmer during a political week
Humanitarian response tends to take a backseat in the UNGA bubble, but there is no shortage of pressing crises and unanswered questions.
Who gets to decide Gaza’s future? Are there adequate resources and levers to address the latest escalation in Yemen? Will UNGA discussions meaningfully tackle Sudan’s conflict – globally neglected despite foreign meddling? Will authorities and emergency responders gain more ground on containing the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
Or who’s responsible for paying for the damages from Nepal’s catastrophic climate-worsened floods? And is there money and foresight to prepare for the coming El Niño phenomenon, which will supercharge weather extremes in the coming months?
Another opaque UN appointment will be top of mind for some humanitarians: American Luke Lindberg, a Trump nominee, has officially been named the new head of the World Food Programme. He’ll be expected to unlock funding for one of the world’s biggest humanitarian agencies, but many also question his experience and the political nature of his selection.
Will climate meetings match the urgency of the moment?
Alongside the high-level UN summitry is the non-profit hosted Climate Week, which smushes together a wide range of interests: climate activism and civil society; corporations including energy producers, polluters, and those who want them to pay; and government reps, politicos, and UNGA stragglers.
Some have compared it to the Burning Man festival or to the elite Davos gathering. It can be a whiplash-inducing mix: phasing out fossil fuels is a core goal of today’s climate movement; the American Petroleum Institute is also holding an event that focuses on US energy dominance and appears not to mention climate change.
A question applicable to UNGA and Climate Week alike: Will the tone match the urgency of the moment? The past 11 years have been the 11 hottest on record, and climate scientists say it’s now “unavoidable” that global temperatures will soar past the 1.5-degree Celsius limit that countries agreed on in order to prevent the worst damages.
The Himalayan floods in Nepal, where rapid warming caused by climate change was a clear factor, is a talking point. Nepal’s government reportedly plans to claim $20 million from the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage. The fund is now online after years-long climate negotiations held up by wealthy countries, but has yet to dish out any money.
“The loss and damage fund was created for precisely this moment, and it must come forward and support Nepal without delay,” Harjeet Singh, founder of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said in a statement.
But among several governments, the trend is pushing in the other direction: from stepping away from finance commitments for some, to outright dismissal of climate change and moves to thwart progress for others. The US is reportedly pressuring development banks to ditch hard-won climate finance targets. In July, it successfully convinced the World Bank to drop climate targets from its lending portfolio. Donor governments like Germany and the UK have also cut climate funding in their aid budgets.
Women and girls sidelined in global emergencies
The UN has never had a female leader, and it still may not when the backroom wrangling in today’s secretary-general selection process is over.
Meanwhile, attention for women and girls in the multilateral system has been sidelined through ideological policies and neglect.
Aid cuts have dismantled women’s organisations working in humanitarian crises, and political decisions are eroding and defunding institutions that defend gender equality.
In parallel, women and girls in emergencies are losing access to healthcare and education, and protection from violence, which escalates during crises. UN Women calls it “a political retreat from gender equality”.
AI discussions underscore who has influence, and the limits of UN convening
Artificial intelligence dominates public discourse. It also seeps into everything throughout high-level week, from governance to tech-solutionism, or to the sometimes-conflicting aims found in the overly broad umbrella known as “AI safety”.
Both Guterres and the Security Council are expected to convene meetings on AI governance.
Yet parallel meetings happening elsewhere also underscore questions about how much agenda-setting power the UN has, despite UNGA being a global forum for member states to discuss peace, conflict, and the world’s most pressing issues.
As the UN tries to convene on AI, Chinese leader Xi Jinping will visit the White House for a dinner that reportedly includes tech giants like OpenAI and Nvidia, and US President Donald Trump’s AI adviser.
Edited by Andrew Gully.