With the 75th Annual General Assembly of the United Nations reduced to speeches recorded during the pandemic, leaders are taking advantage this week as an opportunity to describe the pandemic from the attitude of their country and themselves, and to provide their visions of efforts to combat the virus and protect what they want done.
Countless of the speeches on Tuesday, the first day of the general debate:
– South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has called for the suspension of African countries’ debt interest and renewed attention to poverty elimination.
– Chilean President Sebastion Piaera called on hard nations to paint in combination and avoid generating “a concern for lack of leadership. “
– Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte echoed the call of many leaders when he said that once an effective vaccine is developed, it will have to be available to all nations.
Unsurprisingly, in such speeches, addressed to both the national public and the foreign community, heads of state make their own efforts in a favourable manner while harshly criticizing other countries or launching themselves against the United Nations.
This year’s theme – “Reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism” – comes at a time of excessive physical isolation between the citizens of the respective countries and between nations, at a time when the foreigner has declined considerably. millions of deaths from the virus since December, adding urgency to finding solutions.
“The leaders of our nations are not personally present. They will not be able to interact with each other,” Said General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir, a Turkish diplomat, at the opening of Tuesday’s session. But our desire for deliberation is greater than ever. . “
Despite this year’s theme, speeches by leaders of some of the world’s toughest nations so far have been dotted with projects that seem more spontaneous than collaborative, all have given a nod to collaboration.
Russian President Vladimir Putin even offered the UN a vaccine against the coronavirus that his country is developing. Chinese President Xi Jinping said a handful of vaccines were in phase 3 of clinical trials and that Beijing would donate millions to a United Nations fund. to fight the virus.
“1. 4 billion Chinese, fearless through COVID-19, made each and every effort against the virus,” Xi said, noting how China had particularly slowed the spread after the virus was discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while commending his own country’s cooperation and asking countries to paint together, took a look at the current functioning of the United Nations. Earlier this year, Erdogan said, it took months for the Security Council to match talking about the pandemic.
Saeed Khan, director of global studies at Wayne State University in Michigan, said the coronavirus had “become a metaphor for globalism as opposed to nationalism. “
“The greatest resistance comes from hypernationalist regimes,” he said.
Certainly, the pandemic has caused slow-simmering divisions between nations, new things to discuss.
U. S. President Donald Trump said at the meeting that the United States had “led a fight opposed to a wonderful enemy, the Chinese virus,” and called on the United Nations to hold China back for the virus and other things.
Trump, campaigning for re-election for the November election, did not mention that Tuesday the United States took an unwanted milestone – 200,000 coronavirus deaths, across the top of countries on the global – or that polls show that most Americans disapprove. of his management of the pandemic.
Xi said that “any politicization or stigmatization, that “large countries act like large countries” should be avoided and that a solution cannot be found simply by burying ” the head in the sand as an ostrich”, not as sophisticated criticisms of the American response. Cuban President Miguel Daaz-Canel Bermoedez lamented the extent to which COVID-19 had replaced everyday life and then argued that American policies, uncontrolled capitalism, and military spending were causing many unrest in the world.
Richard Caplan, professor of foreign affairs at Oxford University, said there have been “assaults” on multinationalism around the pandemic, i. e. in the form of “vaccine nationalism,” there have also been indications that COVID-19 can simply lead to greater cooperation, even among lifelong enemies.
Caplan noted that before this year, Israel and the Palestinian Authority coordinated efforts between fitness ministries. Thousands of Palestinian employees had to stay in Israel for longer periods to stop the spread of the virus.
“Unfortunately, this unprecedented cooperation has failed, in part because of political tensions related to Trump’s (Middle East) peace plan and Israel’s progress toward annexation,” Caplan said.
There is also the global access mechanism for COVID-19 vaccines, or COVAX, a group of more than 150 countries that pool their resources around the disease and the distribution of a long-term vaccine. World Health Organization, Trump says WHO is heavily influenced through China and that joining the effort can limit U. S. efforts to expand a vaccine.
Some leaders know about other virus-related disorders that need to be addressed.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he was involved about the imaginable moment and the third wave of coronavirus and, like many others, also pointed to the damage done to economies around the world.
“Like a tsunami after an earthquake, the aftershocks sweep us away,” he said.
On the question of reviving the global economy, few concrete advice has emerged. Most leaders seemed to argue that a vaccine was the only viable long-term solution, many citing fear of local economies as a means of protecting pandemic control at home.
At a time when heads of state cannot meet in the user and many do not seem interested in deepening ties, it is not known what progress the United Nations can make at this year’s meeting, which runs until 29 September. other leaders will communicate about the pandemic and its own experiences, and in combination will create an idea of the global leadership of human struggle that is taking a position at this point in history.
However, in terms of a vaccine, in the long run it doesn’t matter how far back multilateralism is in the assembly, said Naim Salem, a foreign affairs professional at the University of Notre Dame in Beirut, Lebanon.
“Multilateral cooperation is optimal,” Salem said, “but if a vaccine is effective in one country, it will be absorbed by other countries. “
———
Peter Prengaman, a long-time correspondent, is the regional news director of the western US region. But it’s not the first time For The Associated Press.
24/7 policy of the latest news and events