The United Nations has completed eighty years of its turbulent, controversial life, and right now, world leaders like presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens and potentates are making a beeline for New York to represent their countries at the 80th Session of the UN General Assembly. The 80th ordinary session opens on 9 September 2025 and will close on 8 September 2026. Her Excellency Annalena Baerbock of Germany is the President of the General Assembly at its 80th session. The upcoming General Debate, which is now underway, will bring together a cast of thousands of delegates over the course of 10 days. UN Secretary-General António Guterres describes the session as the “World Cup of diplomacy.” Yet he adds, “But this cannot be about scoring points; it must be about solving problems. There is too much at stake.”
This session begins at a time when the world is beset with conflicts, wars, genocide and bloodshed on a global scale, such as the war in Ukraine, the slaughter in Gaza, civil wars and unrest in Sudan, Haiti, and Congo, and the ongoing conflicts in Yemen, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Lebanon and the ever-present India-Pakistan tensions. As more than 150 heads of state and government converge at the meeting, the General Assembly’s President, Annalena Baerbock, a former German foreign minister, describes the mood with a slogan “Better Together”, alluding to the need to pursue “Dialogue and Diplomacy.” In her opening address to the Assembly, Ms Baerbock stated, “This is not a normal session. We stand at a crossroads, a make-or-break moment. Eight decades of progress and setbacks, of achievement and failure, of renewal and resolve, have brought us here.” Pakistan is represented by a large delegation headed by the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar.
The star of the show was definitely the US President, the maverick Donald Trump. In a hard-hitting 55-minute speech, he advised the leaders of the world to contain nationalism within their own countries, was bitterly critical of the United Nations and called it an ineffective organisation with nothing to show as a success story, and went on to say that migration and renewable energy are the biggest threats to the free world today.
He remained mute about the genocide and slaughter in Gaza and the Israeli atrocities being committed every day. Leaders from major Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan waited in the wings to meet and pay their respects to the US President. The meeting came as world leaders discussed Israel’s war in Gaza from the UNGA stage and questioned whether a ceasefire agreement is within reach. Several Arab leaders met with Trump to discuss Gaza, with Turkish President Erdogan saying the exchange was “very fruitful”, despite no concrete developments being announced.
Unless world leaders act now, “there will be no earth to fight wars over”
Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan, describing first-hand the scale and magnitude of the climate catastrophe that has pushed one third of his country under water in a superstorm no one has seen in living memory, said: “For 40 days and 40 nights, a biblical flood poured down on us, smashing centuries of weather records, challenging everything we knew about disaster, and how to manage it.” Today, huge swathes of the country are still underwater. In this ground zero of climate change, 33 million people, including women and children, are now at high risk from health hazards, with 650,000 women giving birth in makeshift tarpaulins, he added. More than 1,500 people have perished in the great flood, including over 400 children, and far more were in peril from disease and malnutrition. Millions of migrants continue to look for dry land with heartbreaking losses to their families, futures and their livelihoods. A million homes have been destroyed and another million damaged, he said, detailing other estimates on damage.
“Pakistan has never seen a stark and devastating example of the impact of global warming. Life in Pakistan has changed forever,” he said, noting that people in Pakistan ask why this has happened to them, especially when the calamity had not been triggered by anything they had done. “Our glaciers are melting fast, our forests are burning and our heatwaves have crossed 53°C, making us the hottest place on the planet,” he reported, warning that “what happened in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan.”
Hotspots like his country fall in the list of ten most climate-vulnerable countries yet emit less than one per cent of the greenhouse gases that are burning the planet. He expressed gratitude for the Secretary-General’s visit to his country and his assurance of support and assistance, and thanked every country that has sent help in Pakistan’s “most trying hour”. Pakistan has mobilised all available resources towards national relief efforts and repurposed all budget priorities to the rescue and first-order needs of millions, among other efforts. The dual costs of global inaction and climate injustice are crippling both its treasury and its people. Unless world leaders act now, “there will be no earth to fight wars over.”
His country’s urgent priority is to ensure rapid economic growth and lift millions out of destitution and hunger, he continued. For that, Pakistan needs a stable external environment. Sustainable peace and stability in South Asia remain contingent upon a just and lasting solution to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. “India’s illegal and unilateral actions of 5 August 2019 to change the internationally recognised ‘disputed’ status of Jammu and Kashmir and to alter the demographic structure of the occupied territory further undermined the prospects of peace and inflamed regional tensions,” he said.
Detailing India’s other actions in that regard, he urged the country to take credible steps to create an enabling environment for constructive engagement. He also said his country has led the humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan, and he urged the international community to respond to the Secretary-General’s appeal for $4.2 billion in humanitarian and economic assistance and release Afghanistan’s financial reserves.
