United Nations: For the first time in its history, the high-level debate of the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization (UN) begins its sessions today virtually, due to restrictions in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, Prensa Latina publishes.
This will be a different General Assembly, as predicted by the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, and it will be done without the physical presence at the headquarters of the multilateral organization in New York of hundreds of world leaders, as is usual at this time.
For this appointment, the video participation of some 170 heads of state and government is expected, the highest number of leaders registered so far, as announced by the highest representative of the UN.
From September 22 to 29, world leaders will address the plenary virtually using pre-recorded video materials.
Speeches by the presidents of Brazil, the United States, Turkey, China, Chile, South Africa, Cuba, Russia, Jordan, Iran, France, Colombia, Egypt, Mexico, Uruguay, Angola, Argentina, Nigeria , Costa Rica, Guatemala, Indonesia, Peru, among others included in a preliminary list released before the event, are expected in this session.
Under the theme ‘The future we want, the UN we need: reaffirmation of our collective commitment to multilateralism in the fight against Covid-19 through effective multilateral action’ this debate of the General Assembly will be held.
In fact, the President of the Assembly in its 75th session, Volkan Bozkir, indicated that fighting the Covid-19 pandemic will be a priority in his year in office.
In these last six months, the role of the UN has changed in many aspects and now there are other priorities, among the first, the fight against the pandemic, he stressed when addressing for the first time the plenary session of the largest United Nations body, which met last week under strict sanitary measures.
He also regretted that the health crisis has been used to justify unilateral actions, and right in the middle of such a difficult scenario, the need for international cooperation is questioned.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, United Nations bodies transformed their working methods and most of the events were transferred to virtual platforms.
Many countries of the world closed their borders and there are currently numerous flight restrictions, in order to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, for which it would be extremely complex and risky to gather high dignitaries from around the world at the UN headquarters in New York.
In addition, for months the United States has remained the country with the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the world.
Against this background, the general debate of the Assembly and other high-level events within the framework of this segment, such as a summit on biodiversity and a meeting to commemorate and promote the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, will attend the virtual platforms for its realization.