The Just Security Podcast

What to Expect from the 2024 U.N. General Assembly

• Just Security • Episode 82

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Next week, world leaders from nearly 150 nations will meet in New York for the annual high-level week during the United Nations General Assembly’s new session. Among the many topics for discussion will be the ongoing wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan, efforts to regulate artificial intelligence and get sustainable development back on track, and the role of the U.N. Security Council in international peace and security. 

The formal and informal meetings of the week will play out as many of the U.N.’s agencies and institutions – from the Security Council to the International Court of Justice – are under stress and scrutiny. What are the key trends to watch for? How might the upcoming U.S. presidential election shape the discussions and debate? 

Co-hosting this episode is Just Security’s Washington Senior Editor, Viola Gienger. 

Joining the show to unpack the key themes around this year’s U.N. General Assembly is Richard Gowan. Richard is the U.N. Director at the International Crisis Group, an organization providing independent analysis and advice on how to prevent, resolve or better manage conflict.

Show Notes:  

Paras Shah: Next week, world leaders from nearly 150 countries will meet in New York for the annual high-level week of the United Nations General Assembly’s new session. Among the many topics for discussion will be the ongoing wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan, efforts to regulate artificial intelligence and promote economic development, and the role of the U.N. Security Council in international peace and security. 

The formal and informal meetings of the week will play out as many of the U.N.’s agencies and institutions — from the Security Council to the International Court of Justice — are under stress and scrutiny. What are the key trends to watch for? How might the upcoming U.S. presidential election shape the discussions and debate? 

This is the Just Security Podcast. I’m your host, Paras Shah. Co-hosting with me today is Just Security’s Washington Senior Editor, Viola Gienger. 

Viola Gienger: Joining the show to unpack the key themes around this year’s U.N. General Assembly is Richard Gowan. Richard is the U.N. Director at the International Crisis Group, an organization providing independent analysis and advice on how to prevent, resolve or better manage conflict.

Paras: Richard, welcome to the show. In a recent piece for Just Security, you noted that this year's U.N. General Assembly comes with “a mixture of listlessness and nervousness.” Explain what you mean by that. What are you hearing in terms of the mood around U.N. headquarters, and what are the key tensions at play? 

Richard Gowan: Well, the overall mood around the U.N. is pretty low at the moment. The last year has been draining, I think, for almost everyone working around the organization. Obviously, that is primarily because the war between Israel and Hamas, and the awful situation in Gaza, has dominated the organization's time. And there have been very emotional debates over Gaza. I think there's a sad sense now that the U.N. really is not in a position to do very much to bring the war to a close, and there is a lot of nervousness also about the risks of a widening conflict in the Middle East, and this does cast a long shadow over the organization. Now, in addition to that, you have continuing debates over Russia's aggression against Ukraine. You have an awful situation in Sudan where the U.N. is struggling again to really make an impact. And I think these three conflicts in particular are really weighing down on the organization as a whole. 

So, this adds up, and you do start to hear even quite long time U.N. officials and diplomats from countries that are normally friendly towards multilateralism, asking whether we're approaching a very negative turning point, whether the U.N. is really in a downward spiral that will be very hard to stop. And it's interesting — one thing you hear a lot from diplomatic contacts is that they find it harder and harder to get their capitals and their political masters back home to really take that much of an interest in what they're doing here in New York. 

So, this is why everyone is going into the General Assembly week with a sort of underlying sense of trepidation. 

Paras: Yeah, that is a fairly downbeat mood. And realistically, when it comes to the biggest problems in the world, how relevant is the United Nations as an institution?

Richard: Well, I think it's important to say that, you know, for all the gloom, the U.N. is still on the front lines in a lot of crises, and it does still play a significant role in at least limiting human suffering in many situations, including Gaza, where, you know, the U.N. is still playing a humanitarian role. If you look at situations like Afghanistan, it's really only the U.N. that is still there helping civilians after the Western exit. And so, I think that we shouldn't write off what the organization is doing, but I think we do have to recognize that in many cases, it's essentially a big international Band-Aid. It's providing humanitarian assistance. It can help the suffering. But, given the very high level of tension that we're seeing between the major powers and the veto powers in the Security Council, the U.N. is not able to step in and “solve Ukraine or “solve Gaza.” So, we have to temper our ambitions. 

Viola: And with that reference to the Security Council, even as the General Assembly is meeting now and getting ready for high-level week, the wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan continue, and thousands of people being killed and millions displaced, adding to the global displacement crisis that has now been going on for years already. How has the Security Council responded specifically to those three conflicts in your assessment, and what are the prospects for any meaningful action you mentioned a few minutes ago about that they are having a hard time coming to any agreement, of course, and that there’s a, you know, sense of being dispirited about that? So, how do you see the Security Council's work, and the General Assembly's work as well, on those three conflicts? I mean, there was a bit of a high watermark after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the all-out, full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, action at the General Assembly. But what about since then?

Richard: So, I think the Security Council has struggled in all of these situations, but it struggled in different ways. In the case of Ukraine, the Council has basically been stuck since February 2022, because Russia has ensured that the Council can do nothing meaningful on the conflict. And actually, the Ukrainians and the U.S. and other allies of Kyiv have recognized that, and they've essentially used the Council as a space for public shaming of the Russians. And there have been well over 100, maybe approaching 200, meetings now in different formats involving Council members on the war, primarily just to keep a spotlight on what Moscow is doing. tTe Russians also call Council meetings where they give their version of events and they try and shame the Ukrainians. 

On Gaza, the initial months after the 7th of October were a dreadful time for the Council, and this was because the majority of members, from a very early stage, wanted to call for a pause in hostilities. And the U.S. simply said no repeatedly, and the U.S. used its veto to ensure that the Council only spoke up on humanitarian issues until the spring of 2024. That created a lot of negativity towards the U.S. And I would say, by the way, that the Russians really stirred up that sense of negativity because, you know, for once, it was Washington that was looking like the bad guy.

That has changed, though, and the U.S. position has changed. And in June of this year, I think, the U.S. tabled its own ceasefire resolution in the Council, which obviously, tragically, has not been implemented, but did ease some of the diplomatic tensions about the war, because now U.N. members see that, broadly speaking, the U.S. is aiming in the same direction that they would like. And so, we have seen a little bit of a reduction, I think, of the ill feeling over Gaza at the U.N. in the course of the summer, although it's still obviously a very distressing situation and will be the top topic of conversation at the General Assembly. 

Sudan falls into another category. In 2023, when the war broke out, the Council was very slow to respond, I think, beyond a few minor statements. And that was in part because the African members of the Council, as is now often the case with conflicts in Africa, were saying the U.N. shouldn't be leading here. It should be African mediators who are leading. And the Council, to some extent, deferred to that. In the course of the last year, it's become absolutely clear that no mediation efforts in Sudan have been working, and the U.S. actually, I think, with broad support from the Council as a whole, has been pushing harder calling for a ceasefire. I think there have been two resolutions calling for ceasefires. The Sudan war does divide the council membership, but it doesn't divide them quite as fundamentally as Gaza and Ukraine do. 

And it's interesting, I think, that next week in in the big General Assembly hustle and bustle, you're actually going to be hearing a lot about Sudan from the U.S., but also from others, because this is one conflict where everyone has a sense that the U.N. really should be doing more. And there's a bit of a — there's a bit of a sense of creeping shame, I think, around the organization, that the U.N. has achieved so little on Sudan to date. 

Just quickly, on your question about the General Assembly, you know, it is very notable that as the Security Council has become less active and less effective, the General Assembly has been stepping up and passing more resolutions addressing specific conflicts. That actually really began in 2021 with Myanmar, but it accelerated in 2022 over Ukraine. The U.S. was very successful with the E.U. in getting big majorities to back Ukraine in the first phase of Russia's aggression, but over the last year, we've seen a flip, and the General Assembly has focused on Gaza, passed a series of resolutions demanding a ceasefire, and the U.S. has been on the defensive. That has actually also stopped the General Assembly really talking about Ukraine. The Ukrainians themselves have realized that if they try and get support for big new resolutions criticizing Russia, they're not going to get the support they were previously receiving, because everyone is so angry over Gaza. 

So, there's a lot of talk about a more active General Assembly. I think it's a really interesting point of discussion, but we're seeing that it's very hard for the Assembly to deal with two major crises at the same time, which divide the membership in very different ways.

Viola: Right. Thank you very much. That was really helpful to get that lay of the land.  

Paras: Yeah, and speaking of the idea of the Security Council, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., has floated a proposal of adding two additional permanent seats for African states to the Council, albeit without veto power. And she also called on the General Assembly to begin negotiations on that prospect. What are the chances of that proposal gaining traction, and what are other options around Security Council reform? 

Richard: I think it's very striking that because there's such a high level of discontent amongst the overall U.N. membership with how the Council has acted on Ukraine and Gaza, but also on some other wars, such as the war in Myanmar and the awful war in Ethiopia, where the U.N. really did not have a role — you know, these have combined, and there is just a general sense around the U.N. now that you can't pretend the Security Council is working. Even the five veto powers do not pretend that the Council is working. And there is a strong sense that the time has come to finally reform the body almost 80 years after it started work.  

Now, it's one thing for everyone to agree that you need Security Council reform. That is patently obvious. It's rather different to get everyone to agree on what the shape of reform would look like. But I do think that there is a growing sense that discussions of Council reform, which have meandered on for years, need to kick up quite a few gears, and that this needs to be a topic of serious discussion. This is something that President Biden actually pushed forward in 2022. In his speech at the General Assembly two years ago, he talked about the need for Security Council reform. We've also seen some really quite intensive talks, actually, over the last year, led by Austria and Kuwait, getting countries to agree, at a minimum, on some sort of guiding principles for what a Council reform discussion would look like. And one thing that everyone agrees on, for example, is that Africa should have a greater voice in the Security Council. And Linda Thomas-Greenfield sort of took one step further when she said that that meant Africa should have two permanent seats. 

So, you know, the clamor for Council reform is very real, but there are some big obstacles to actually getting to reform. You know, there is still no agreement on whether some big powers like India should get a permanent seat, and the Indians insist they should have a permanent seat and a veto. Even the call for greater African representation raises some pretty knotty problems, because the African group may not be able to agree on who should fill those two permanent seats that the U.S. is offering. And even if by some sort of diplomatic miracle, you actually did get a diplomatic deal on reshaping the Council, two thirds of the U.N.’s members —including all the permanent members — have to ratify that, because it involves altering the U.N. Charter. And that is the bar you have to jump to change the charter. 

So, you would have to go to capitals, you have to get ratification, and that means going to Washington and getting the Senate to ratify alterations to the U.N. Charter. And that strikes me as a very, very, very high bar to leap, given the state of politics in Washington, let alone the state of politics in New York. 

Paras: Yeah, a lot of complications there, domestically and internationally. 

Richard: I would add that I still think that it's good that the Biden administration did help open up this conversation about Council reform. This was in contrast to 2005, around the time of the U.N. 60th anniversary, when there was a lot of talk about Council reform after Iraq. And at that time, the U.S. and Chinese actually buddied up and squished the reform drive. Instead, this time, I think Washington is recognizing the level of discontent with the Council. I think there's a lot of discontent in Washington about the state of the U.N. And Biden has staked out an unusually open approach to at least thinking through what Council reform would look like and you know, one day, perhaps quite a long way into the future, we may look back and say that part of his legacy was to open up a debate on reforming the U.N. that otherwise would have been very difficult to get moving. 

Viola: That’s interesting. Switching gears a little bit, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has tried to chart a pretty wide-ranging agenda for his Summit of the Future, with topics from economic development to regulating artificial intelligence. So far, it appears that effort may fall flat amid the negotiations over the Pact for the Future. Those are continuing, sounds like right down to the wire. What can we expect from that summit, and how might it lay the groundwork for future diplomatic agendas — future diplomatic efforts. And I mean, as I understand it, the Summit of the Future is basically about trying to improve the performance of the U.N. systems, right? Especially the Security Council, but also other mechanisms?

Richard: So, the origin of the Summit of the Future was a report that Antonio Guterres released in 2021 called Our Common Agenda. And Our Common Agenda was the Secretary-General's reflection on the state of multilateralism after his first term in office. And it's a surprisingly bold, conceptually bold report, because it pointed out that a lot of the multilateral system we have today is functioning poorly, and there are also big gaps in the system. Guterres is very interested by humanity's long-term future. And so, he emphasized that we don't have international mechanisms to govern artificial intelligence or the use of outer space, for example. And so, the challenge that he laid down in 2021 was, in the wake of the pandemic, in the wake of a, you know, a global health crisis, could U.N. member states put their differences aside, put their immediate interests aside, and come together and really talk about how to overhaul the whole international system to keep up with the times.

Now, the answer to that question, sadly, has been no, they can't really do that. And unfortunately, what we have seen over the ensuing three years is that U.N. members have really struggled to come together around any sort of any big multilateral reforms. Member states have been negotiating a Pact for the Future, which is a super wide-ranging document covering essentially all aspects of multilateral cooperation and saying how they should be improved. But, that has been difficult, because different blocs and different countries have had fundamentally divergent priorities. Developing countries have really tried to use this as an opportunity to talk about the need to overhaul the international financial institutions so that it's easier for poor states to get financing. Quite a lot of countries have been trying to use this as an opportunity to push for a new drive for nuclear disarmament. That has infuriated the Russians and, to be honest, the other nuclear states. There's been a lot of friction on a lot of files.  

It's the 19th of September as we're speaking. The Pact for the Future is meant to be ready for the Summit of the Future, which starts on the 22nd. I have just been at U.N. headquarters, where diplomats are still trying to finalize the text, and I ran into a number of people involved with the process, and they all said they don't know whether it's going to be done in time. So, this is partially brinksmanship, partially people taking the negotiation to the wire to get final concessions. But it is, it is really quite worrying, and it's not living up to the vision that Guterres set out a few years ago.  

I think, you know, there are some positive — there are some positives still coming out of this process. One has been an intensified discussion of Council reform, as we've already addressed. The other is that actually, there has been a lot of discussion, really, for the first time in the last year, about what role the U.N. could have in helping manage the development of AI and the way that states cooperate around AI. And there's a Global Digital Compact, a special agreement that addresses these issues, that is non-binding, but probably does provide an interesting basis for more substantial discussions of AI governance going forward. So that at least, is one part of the Guterres agenda, which does seem to have taken hold. 

Viola: So, what if they cannot reach agreement by the Summit of the Future on the Pact for the Future? Are the scenarios either it's just hopelessly watered down or what?

Richard: By the time of this recording, we may know the answer to that. There may be a last-minute agreement. Otherwise, you could have a summit without a pact. You could have negotiations on the details of the pact continuing after the summit, although that would be, you know, awfully embarrassing. I should say that we're at a point where I think over 170 countries have now said that they're happy with the text of the Pact for the Future as it stands. The U.S., which, on a lot of issues, was a spoiler earlier in the process, for example, on questions around international financial reforms, has said it is happy with the text as it stands. I think the E.U. is happy. So, I think that we're in a position where if a small minority of countries end up blocking it, they will face a lot of criticism and a lot of shame, and for that reason alone, we may finally stumble to a deal. 

But, you know, it does feel quite dicey at the moment, and this is not really the way that you should run a world institution.

Viola: It's a big institution to run. So, thank you. 

Paras: So, an elephant in the room here, in a certain sense, is the U.S. upcoming presidential election in November, and by January, we will have a change in presidential administrations. How are world leaders reacting to the prospect of a second term for Donald Trump and, on the other hand, Kamala Harris's candidacy? 

Richard: So firstly, I think it's, you know, it's worth saying that the last year has not just been difficult for the U.N. Tt's been difficult for U.S.-U.N. relations, because the vast bulk of the U.N. membership has been very disappointed with the way that the U.S. has really stopped the U.N. getting more involved in solving the Gaza crisis. And so, President Biden is giving his final address to the General Assembly on the 24th I'm sure he'll give us a sort of sweeping valedictory statement. And he will be able to point to a lot of things that his administration did that were broadly popular, for example, rejoining the Paris climate deal, which the Trump administration had left. But there will still be a certain ambivalence, because I think a lot of other leaders probably hold Biden personally responsible for not allowing the U.N. to call for a ceasefire much earlier in the war. 

When you look ahead, we don't know very much about what Kamala Harris thinks of the U.N. It's not been one of her major talking points on the campaign trail, and nor should it be. It's not really a massive vote winner in many, many places. Harris has been to the U.N. She's met with Guterres in the past, but she isn't going to come next week, because I think there's a general sense that it would look a little overconfident to spend time in New York when she needs to be out on the campaign trail. So, she will presumably be in Pennsylvania or another swing state, while we're all kibitzing in Manhattan.  

What people do worry about is the return of Trump. And, you know, I think we can be fairly confident that a second Trump administration would pull out of all the things that the first Trump administration pulled out of, so not only the climate deal, but also the Human Rights Council, perhaps the World Health Organization, which Trump was in the process of leaving when he was booted out of office last time. There's also a strong suspicion that the U.S. would severely reduce funding to a lot of U.N. agencies. And this isn't just a matter of Trump's own instincts. It's worth saying that the congressional Republican Party is currently in a very, very anti-U.N. mood, primarily because of all the criticisms that have come from the U.N. of Israel over Gaza. So, if we do end up with a Republican White House and a Republican Congress, you know, you're heading towards a very turbulent, a very turbulent period indeed, I think, at the U.N., regardless of what is happening in Gaza or Ukraine or Sudan. 

Paras: And how might the Biden administration try to leverage or use its remaining few months in office? 

Richard: I think we have to be — we have to be honest. I think that what the majority of U.N. members want to see Biden prioritize is de-escalation in the Middle East and some progress towards implementing the ceasefire call that the Security Council passed in June. It is possible that Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield will sort of pick up this Security Council reform initiative, and you may see some more discussion of that going into January. But to be quite honest, I suspect that a lot of member states will be biding their time, because if Trump does win in November, then, you know, the U.S. is not going to be prioritizing Security Council reform in the in the years ahead. So, I think it really does come down to keeping a lid on the crisis in the Middle East, hopefully finding some sort of solution to the crisis in the Middle East. You might see some farewell diplomatic gestures from the U.S. on Ukraine as well. And I do think that we will see a big push coming out of the General Assembly to get a ceasefire in Sudan. But ultimately, I think Biden's reputation and legacy of the U.N. pivots on the Middle East. 

Viola: Richard, is there anything we haven't addressed yet that you think is important to add in this consideration as we're running up to UNGA79?

Richard: It’s always worth remembering that the General Assembly is a platform for dozens or hundreds of conversations on many, many policy issues. So, antimicrobial resistance is a big theme in the margins of this General Assembly, and this year, a lot of health ministers are coming to New York to talk about that.  

But it's interesting. I think that there is quite a strong sense that leaving the Summit for the Future aside, this is a General Assembly that is going to be dominated by peace and security issues, and especially the three wars we've been talking about — Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan.  That is a bit of a shift, actually, from some recent years. You know, if you go back a few years, the focus of the General Assembly was more on global issues like climate change. And I think it was in 2019 in particular, Antonio Guterres said that U.N. members should focus solely on climate change and not talk about so many other issues. We at Crisis Group had noted in the past couple of years after the pandemic that there seemed to be a decline in the number of ministerial side meetings on specific conflicts, and that was feeding into a narrative that the U.N. doesn't really have so much traction on dealing with peace and security issues and should be focusing instead on development or on climate change.

That narrative seems to have been turned on its head this year. Despite all the discussions of non-peace and security issues, there is now quite an acute sense that the U.N. to sort of go back to the core of the Charter and address security issues head on, and that that is what leaders should be addressing. We don't expect much progress on Gaza. We don't expect much progress on Ukraine. I do think that there is a, you know, a glimmer of a chance that, if you do get some pretty strong messaging coming out of the high-level week about the need for a ceasefire in Sudan, you know, that will give some extra momentum to U.N. mediation efforts, U.S. mediation efforts and others. And if that's the case, it's a reminder about why gathering leaders at the U.N. still has some value.  

Viola: That's really helpful. Richard, thank you so much. It's really great to have that combination of detail and yet, this broad overview that you have with all your years of experience. We really, really appreciate that. Thank you.  

Paras: Yeah, thanks again. We'll be tracking all of this at Just Security.

Richard: Thanks so much indeed.

Paras: This episode was hosted and produced by me, Paras Shah, and Viola Gienger, with help from Clara Apt. 

Special thanks to our guest, Richard Gowan. You can read all of Just Security’s coverage of the U.N. General Assembly, including Richard's analysis, on our website. 

If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five-star rating on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. 

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