World Leaders Gather In New York For An Expectedly Gloomy U.N. General Assembly

With a swirl of conflicts and crises across the world, it's not a great moment in international affairs right now.

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

U.N. 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.

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 like artificial intelligence which have no guardrails.

The two-day summit started Sunday, 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 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.