The war in Ukraine, the escalation of tensions in the Middle East and the crisis in Venezuela are among the topics to be discussed
The United Nations General Assembly will once again serve this week as the hub of world geopolitics, a stage where some of the main leaders will parade to broadly present their views on current issues, from the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip to climate change, and the eternal demands for reform of the UN system.
The general debate is held annually, in the first stages of each session. Technically it is not a debate, but a succession of speeches in which all 193 UN member states have the right to participate, insofar as the General Assembly, unlike the Security Council, does allow all of them to participate. Observer states such as the Vatican and Palestine, as well as the European Union, can also participate.
These types of meetings were held for the first time in 1946 and the first speakers are the UN Secretary General and the President of the Assembly. By country, since the tenth edition, Brazil has spoken first – according to the UN Protocol Services, initially no country wanted to break the ice, but Brazil did so on several occasions and has ended up consolidating itself.
The United States, as the host country, is the next to take the podium, and from there the rest of the countries speak based on the level of their delegations – those who participate with their respective heads of state have the right to speak first – and based on other parameters such as geographical balance or the preferences raised.
For the 2024 edition, the provisional list includes Turkey as the third speaker, followed by Jordan, Guatemala, Switzerland, Colombia, Qatar and South Africa. Spain will speak on the morning of the fourth day, on Friday, while the order of interventions will be closed by Kiribati on September 30.
There is no strict rule on the length of speeches, but political leaders are informally encouraged to limit themselves to 15 minutes and speakers are subtly notified when the time is up, with a flashing red light. The record is still held by former Cuban President Fidel Castro, who spoke for 269 minutes in 1960.
SIDELINES MEETINGS
The UN often takes advantage of the influx of international leaders to organize sideline forums, as is the case this year with the Future Summit that will precede the debates in the Assembly. It also provides an opportunity for attendees to organize sideline meetings, either bilaterally or multilaterally, if the topic being discussed is of common interest.
The 2024 general debate will be the first since the outbreak of the conflict in the Gaza Strip, as the Hamas attacks took place on October 7, 2023, so tensions in the Middle East will likely also be present at the General Assembly’s podium, as will the conflict that opened in February 2022 between Ukraine and Russia due to the invasion ordered by Vladimir Putin.
Among those who have already confirmed their attendance in New York is, in fact, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who will travel with a new peace proposal under his arm to personally explain it to his American counterpart, Joe Biden. Zelensky has also met with the main candidates in the November elections, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Another of the crises called to hover over the meetings is that of Venezuela, which in principle will be represented by its foreign minister, Yván Gil. The debate sparked by the July 28 presidential election has further damaged the image of Nicolás Maduro’s regime and has become one of the main causes of concern throughout Latin America.
