NEW YORK CITY: Prime Minister Imran Khan will deliver a virtual address to the General Assembly on September 24 (Friday) as world leaders return to the United Nations from Monday (tomorrow) with a focus on boosting efforts to fight both climate change and coronavirus which last year forced them to send video statements for the annual gathering.
As the coronavirus still rages amid an inequitable vaccine rollout, about a third of the 193 UN states are planning to again send videos, but presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers for the remainder are due to travel to the United States.
“We will participate actively in the General Assembly session,” Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN, Munir Akram, said in an interview with the Associated Press of Pakistan.
Observing that the world confronts multiple challenges — the pandemic, its devastating impact on the developing economies and growing threat of climate change — Akram said these challenges coincide with rising tensions between the great powers, particularly the US and China, a new arms race and persisting and proliferating conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.
“It is expected that the focus of the discussions will be on these global issues and on certain conflict situations,” the ambassador said.
Akram said member states were also expected to respond to a report — Our Common Agenda — submitted last week by Secretary General Antonio Guterres that proposes several new initiatives for enabling the UN to deal with the world’s current and future problems.
He said Pakistan’s policy statement, which will be delivered by Prime Minister Khan, is expected to convey Islamabad’s views on the major global economic and political issues, as well as on the grave rights situation in India-occupied Kashmir and on the evolving security situation in Afghanistan.
Throughout the session, Pakistan will draw global attention to the rights violations in held Kashmir, the imperative to stabilise Afghanistan, the need to combat Islamophobia and counter disinformation as well as to address the economic challenges confronting developing countries, he said.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi will also participate in person in several events being held during the body’s high-level week including a meeting of the OIC Working Group on Jammu and Kashmir, and a ministerial meeting of the Uniting for Consensus group on Security Council reforms.
Qureshi will also hold a number of bilateral meetings with his counterparts, meet the UN boss, address think tanks and meet members of the Pakistan community and businessmen in New York besides the local and international media.
The United States tried to dissuade leaders from coming to New York in a bid to stop the UN General Assembly from becoming a “super-spreader event,” although President Joe Biden will address the assembly in person, his first UN visit since taking office.
A so-called UN honour system means that anyone entering the assembly hall effectively declares they are vaccinated, but they do not have to show proof.
This system will be broken when the first country speaks — Brazil. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is a vaccine skeptic, who last week declared that he does not need the shot because he is already immune after being infected with Covid-19.
Should he change his mind, New York City has set up a van outside the United Nations for the week to supply free testing and free shots of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Reuters that the discussions around how many traveling diplomats might have been immunized illustrated “how dramatic the inequality is today in relation to vaccination.” He is pushing for a global plan to vaccinate 70% of the world by the first half of next year.
Out of 5.7 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines administered around the world, only 2% have been in Africa. Biden will host a virtual meeting from Washington with leaders and chief executives on Wednesday that aims to boost the distribution of vaccines globally.
Demonstrating US Covid-19 concerns about the UN gathering, Biden will be in New York only for about 24 hours, meeting with Guterres on Monday and making his first UN address on Tuesday, directly after Bolsonaro.
His UN envoy, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Biden would “speak to our top priorities: ending the Covid-19 pandemic; combating climate change … and defending human rights, democracy, and the international rules-based order.”
Due to the pandemic, UN delegations are restricted to much smaller numbers and most events on the sidelines will be virtual or a hybrid of virtual and in-person. Among other topics that ministers are expected to discuss during the week are Afghanistan and Iran.
But before the annual speeches begin, Guterres and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will start the week with a summit on Monday to try and save a UN summit — that kicks off in Glasgow, Scotland, on October 31 — from failure.
As scientists warn that global warming is dangerously close to spiraling out of control, the UN COP26 conference aims to wring much more ambitious climate action and the money to go with it from participants around the globe.
“It’s time to read the alarm bell,” Guterres told Reuters last week. “We are on the verge of the abyss.”
— With additional input from Reuters
