Food, climate change, Ukraine in focus at UN General Assembly

Food, climate change, Ukraine in focus at UN General Assembly
September 20, 2022, 12:00 pm

Sri Lanka is grappling with its worst downturn on record after running out of foreign currency to buy imports, leaving scarce supplies of food, fuel and other essentials - Photo. Pixabay

The war in Ukraine, a looming food crisis and combatting climate change are the big issues confronting the international community at the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, the RTE reported.

UN Secretary General António Guterres, who has been heavily involved in trying to broker a deal to protect the giant Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant from the fighting, also wants leaders to concentrate on two other pressing issues.

One is a looming global food shortage next year, with the prospect of multiple famines and social unrest from high food prices.

Part of the problem is a shortage of ammonia fertiliser exports from Russia leading to a collapse in agricultural production, especially in Africa.

The other cause has been a prolonged drought in many of the world's main agricultural regions. That is why the UN chief is pushing for more urgent action to combat climate change.

Climate change threatens people with food and water scarcity, increased flooding, extreme heat, more disease, and economic loss. Human migration and conflict can be a result. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century - Photo. Pixabay

The UN General Assembly is back in person after two years of the pandemic, with leaders required to show up if they wish to speak.

The General Assembly voted to make just one exception - for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is leading resistance to a Russian invasion.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov headed to New York for the summit, where he heard an appeal yesterday from his French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, to allow a security zone outside the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, whose occupation by Moscow has raised mounting concerns.

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In the type of last-minute diplomacy common at previous UN sessions, Secretary of State Antony Blinken convened a first meeting of the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia since a flare-up in fighting.

Also high on the agenda for the UN week will be Iran, whose hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, is traveling to the General Assembly for the first time.

In a US television interview ahead of his arrival, Mr Raisi said that Iran wanted "guarantees" before returning to a nuclear deal that former president Donald Trump trashed in 2018.

"We cannot trust the Americans because of the behaviour that we have already seen from them. That is why if there is no guarantee, there is no trust," he told the 60 Minutes programme on CBS News.

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Mr Biden supports a return to the 2015 agreement, under which Iran drastically scaled back nuclear work in return for promises of sanctions relief.

But the Biden administration says it is impossible in the US system to promise what a future president would do.

Ms Colonna said French President Emmanuel Macron may meet Mr Raisi in hopes of making progress.

But she warned; "There is no better offer for Iran. It's up to them to make a decision."

Mr Raisi can expect to be dogged by protests during his visit including by exile groups that have called for his arrest over mass executions of opponents a decade after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

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