World leaders gather for United Nations General Assembly

Facing a swirl of conflicts and crises across the fragmented world, leaders attending this week’s annual United Nations gathering are being challenged.

Facing a swirl of conflicts and crises across the fragmented world, leaders attending this week’s annual United Nations gathering are being challenged: Work together — not only on front-burner issues but on modernising the international institutions born after World War II so that they can tackle the threats and problems of the future.

United Nations (UN) secretary-general Antonio Guterres issued the challenge a year ago after sounding a global alarm about the survival of humanity and the planet: Come to a “Summit of the Future” and make a new commitment to multilateralism – the foundation of the United Nations and many other global bodies – and start fixing the aging global architecture to meet the rapidly changing world.

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The U.N. chief told reporters last week that the summit “was born out of a cold, hard fact: international challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them.” He pointed to “out-of-control geopolitical divisions” and “runaway” conflicts, climate change, inequalities, debt and new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence which have no guardrails.

The two-day summit started on Sunday (September 22, 2024), two days before the high-level meeting of world leaders begins at the sprawling U.N. compound in New York City.

The General Assembly approved the summit's main outcome document — a 42-page “Pact of the Future” — on Sunday morning (September 22, 2024) with a bang of the gavel by Assembly President Philémon Yang signifying consensus, after the body voted 143-7 with 15 abstentions against considering Russian-proposed amendments to significantly water it down.

The pact is a blueprint to address global challenges from conflicts and climate change to Artificial Intelligence and reforming the U.N. and global institutions. Its impact will depend on its implementation by the Assembly's 193 member nations.