The world is becoming less stable, less peaceful, and with erosion of the respect for the rules; it is sliding into the state of disorder, Slovenian UN Ambassador Samuel Zbogar said at the "Leadership for Peace" for its high-level meeting Wednesday, challenging its 15 member nations to address why the UN body charged with maintaining international peace and security is failing - and how it can do better..
"The event follows our observation that we live in a world of grim statistics, with the highest number of ongoing conflicts, with record high casualties among civilians, among humanitarians, among medical workers, among journalists," Slovenian UN Ambassador Samuel Zbogar told reporters. He cited a record-high 100 million people driven from their homes by conflict.
Under such circumstances' more than 130 presidents, prime ministers and monarchs are gathered at the UN Headquarters to speak this week especially the wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan and the growing possibility of a wider Mideast war, focusing on the high need to rebuild trust to secure the future ever before.
Roughly 2 billion people live in conflict-affected areas, The most vulnerable around the world are counting on us to make progress, to make change, to bring about a sense of hope for them," US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters, to meet the many global challenges, she said, the US focus at the UN meetings will be on ending "the scourge of war."
"There is going to be a rather obvious gap between the Summit of the Future, with its focus on expanding international cooperation, and the reality that the UN is failing in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan," said Richard Gowan, UN director for the International Crisis Group. "Those three wars will be top topics of attention for most of the week."
Meanwhile, the Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Saturday he had cancelled a trip to the United Nations General Assembly and decried "horrific massacres" after deadly attacks in Lebanon blamed on Israel.
Mikati said in a statement that he cancelled his trip "in light of the developments linked to the Israeli aggression on Lebanon", after this week saw an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs and attacks on Hezbollah devices blamed on Israel.
One notable moment at Tuesday's opening assembly meeting: U.S. President Joe Biden's likely final major appearance on the world stage, a platform he has tread upon and revealed in for decades.
Last September, the war in Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, took center stage at the UN global gathering. But this year the spotlight is certain to be on the war in Gaza and escalating violence across the Israeli-Lebanon border, which is now threatening to spread to the wider Middle East.
Iran supports both Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon's Hezbollah militants. Its new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, will address world leaders on Tuesday afternoon. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to speak Thursday morning and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday afternoon.
