UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Racism, climate change and worsening divisions among nations and cultures topped the agenda today as leaders from China to Costa Rica, from Finland to Turkey to the United Nations itself outlined reasons why the world isn’t working as it should — and what must be done quickly to fix it. Said one country’s president: “The future is raising its voice at us.”
For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began early last year, more than two dozen world leaders appeared in person at the U.N. General Assembly on the opening day of their annual high-level meeting Tuesday. In speech after speech, the atmosphere was somber, angry and dire.
Chinese President Xi Jinping warned that “the world has entered a period of new turbulence and transformation.” Finland President Sauli Niinistö said: “We are indeed at a critical juncture.” And Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada declared: “The future is raising its voice at us: Less military weaponry, more investment in peace!”
Speaker after speaker at Tuesday’s opening of the nearly week-long meeting decried the inequalities and deep divisions that have prevented united global action to end the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed nearly 4.6 million lives and is still raging, and the failure to sufficiently tackle the climate crisis threatening the planet.
COVID-19 and climate are certain to remain top issues for heads of state and government. But Wednesday’s U.N. agenda will first turn the spotlight on the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the controversial U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, which was dominated by clashes over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery.
The U.S. and Israel walked out during the meeting over a draft resolution that singled out Israel for criticism and likened Zionism to racism — a provision that was eventually dropped. Twenty countries are boycotting Wednesday’s commemoration, according to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which urged more countries to join them “in continuing to fight racism, bigotry, and anti-Semitism.”
Following the commemoration, heads of state will start delivering their annual addresses again in the vast General Assembly hall. Speakers include King Abdullah II of Jordan, Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Perhaps the harshest assessment of the current global crisis came from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who opened his state of the world address sounding an “alarm” that “the world must wake up.”
“Our world has never been more threatened or more divided,” he said. “We face the greatest cascade of crises in our lifetimes.”
“We are on the edge of an abyss — and moving in the wrong direction,” the secretary-general warned.
Guterres pointed to “supersized glaring inequalities” in addressing COVID-19, “climate alarm bells … ringing at fever pitch,” upheavals from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Yemen and beyond thwarting peace, and “a surge of mistrust and misinformation (that) is polarizing people and paralyzing societies.”
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the pandemic was a reminder “that the entire world are part of a big family.”
“But the solidarity test that we were put to failed us miserably,” he said. “It is a disgrace for humanity that vaccine nationalism is still being carried on through different methods,” and underdeveloped countries and poor segments of societies have been “literally left to their fate in the face of the pandemic.”
As for the climate crisis, Erdogan said whoever did the most damage to nature, the atmosphere and water, “and whoever has wildly exploited natural resources” should make the greatest contribution to fighting global warming.
“Unlike the past, this time no one can afford the luxury to say, ‘I’m powerful so I will not pay the bill’ because climate change will treat mankind quite equally,” the Turkish leader said. “The duty for all of us is to take measures against this enormous threat, with a fair burden-sharing.”
