77th Session of the UN General Assembly to commence
The 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will commence in New York today and last until September 27.
During the session, the Hungarian Csaba Kőrösi will take over from Abdulla Shahid as the UNGA’s president for the coming 12 months. Major events over the coming two weeks include the Transforming Education Summit, the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the UN declaration on the rights of minorities, the UN Private Sector Forum and the SDG Moment, which aims to refocus attention on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
However, this session will likely be overshadowed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is absent from the official agenda. Russia repeatedly blocked all attempts at the condemnation of the infringement of Ukraine’s sovereignty, as well as other major UN decisions, including an attempt to regulate states’ responsible behavior in cyberspace and an agreement on nuclear nonproliferation.
Moscow will likely continue to forestall much of the UN’s work, both from the UNGA and the Security Council, thereby risking a lasting deadlock in the organization’s work on security, development and the environment. Instead, Moscow will likely attempt to use the UNGA as a platform for spreading its propaganda, as it did previously in the Security Council with claims of bioweapon development in Ukraine.
