The 81st UN General Assembly: my views

 DN Opinion

UN: Restoring trust and driving transformation

Victor Ângelo

International Security Advisor. Former UN Under-Secretary-General

Published on: 18 Sep 2026, 02:10

The 81st United Nations General Assembly officially opened on 8 September. Its high-level segment, which gathers heads of state and government in New York between 22 and 28 September, takes place under the theme Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: a UN that delivers results for all. For an organization in crisis, albeit irreplaceable, the decisive test lies not in the vigour of its theme, but in the ability to translate current geopolitics into concrete decisions. At a time when the selection of António Guterres's successor is underway, the speeches should focus on three priorities, each measured by facts, not intentions: promoting peace, establishing multilateral governance of Artificial Intelligence, and placing human development back at the centre of international security.

The first priority is peace. The figures belie the narrative of normalization. In Gaza, the October 2025 ceasefire agreement provided for the entry of 600 aid lorries per day. We are very far from that figure. A substantial part of the little that does enter is commercial cargo rather than humanitarian aid channelled by the agencies. It is this gap between what was agreed and what is executed, not the existence of the ceasefire itself, that defines daily civilian suffering.

In South Sudan, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights documented, over a 17-day period in March, more than 160 civilians killed and approximately 99 water wells destroyed or poisoned. In Sudan—a distinct conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces—the number of civilians killed since 2023 exceeds 59,000, with 14 million displaced and 33.7 million people in need of urgent assistance.

In the Russian aggression against Ukraine, in the Eastern Congo, in the Sahel, and in Myanmar, the patterns repeat themselves: high civilian mortality, mass displacement, and the denial of humanitarian access as an instrument of war.

The UN will not stop these wars from New York. But it can emerge from the high-level segment with a measurable commitment: to allocate a fixed percentage of the budget for special political missions and peacekeeping to the protection of civilians and the implementation of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. A peace process that fails to protect women and children from sexual violence, forced displacement, and starvation is not peace; it is hypocrisy.

The second priority stems from a remarkable convergence: within a few days in September, five voices that rarely agree expressed the same concern regarding Artificial Intelligence. On 12 September, Dario Amodei of Anthropic published the essay We Must Pace the Frontier—roughly 3,800 words—advocating a deliberate slowing of the pace of development in AI capabilities; Sam Altman of OpenAI endorsed the core of the appeal hours later, and Elon Musk did the same.

Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders—opposite extremes of the American political spectrum—joined former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon in a Declaration for Pro-Human AI. King Charles III gathered executives from Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic yesterday, 17 September, to ask them to adhere to common principles. And Pope Leo XIV, in the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, released on 25 May, criticized the logic of the ongoing military, economic, and cognitive competition.

China has already responded institutionally: in July, it created WAICO (World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization), an intergovernmental AI cooperation organization that, as I have argued elsewhere, targets the Global South, but simultaneously functions as a Chinese instrument for defining technical standards and technological decoupling from the United States.

It is precisely because WAICO already exists, with its own architecture and interests, that the General Assembly cannot limit itself to "taking note": it must work to bring together the scattered forums—WAICO included—into a common multilateral framework, converting voluntary principles into verifiable commitments, with an independent review mechanism similar to what the American laboratories have just proposed among themselves.

The third priority should have dominated the headlines when the figures were revealed, but it was ignored: the UNDP Human Development Report, published in 2025, recorded the smallest increase in the Human Development Index (HDI) since 1990. The gap between low-HDI and very high-HDI countries widened for the fourth consecutive year, reversing a decades-long trend. The contrast is revealing: between 1990 and 2023, the Asia-Pacific region increased its HDI by more than 50%; the majority of low-HDI countries saw no equivalent growth. According to the then-UNDP Administrator, if the stagnation of recent years becomes "the new normal", the world could fall decades short of the development projected for 2030.

This is not abstract statistics. It is one of the fuels for the other crises. Persistent poverty feeds migration routes; territories without a functional state or economic prospects are where armed groups recruit most easily, leading to the expansion of banditry and terrorism.

Treating development, migration, and security as separate agendas is the mistake that produced this regression. The General Assembly must recognize that financing development means financing international security.

These three priorities share the same logic: peace without the effective protection of people is a precarious truce; Artificial Intelligence without binding multilateral governance is a race with neither rules nor a referee; and development is not a parallel agenda, but the foundation of common security. Trust is not restored with speeches at the New York podium. It is recovered when States show that solidarity exists.

The African situation

My friends all over Africa tell me that the pandemic is gaining ground in several countries. There are lockdowns in place in some cities. The big problem is that the national health structures have very limited capacity to deal with Covid-19. It all starts with the means of testing. And then, the treatment, the conditions in the hospitals, the shortage of medical staff at every level. There have been some figures about the number of cases. But the tally is far from being reliable.

Leading people in those countries are looking in the direction of China. For them, China could be a model and a source of help. They are also very surprised as they see European nations, developed societies, struggling to respond to the challenge. They can’t understand the difficulties the Europeans meet. They thought that a situation of that type would never happen in Europe. The European image is losing sharpness and light in the African circles. That is one of the consequences of the pandemic.

The ordinary African citizen, particularly those in the big metropolis, have very little space for social distancing. That notwithstanding, I have seen pictures of empty cities throughout the Continent. People know what is at play. And they try to take it as seriously as their living conditions allow them to do it. I have a deep admiration for them. They are, in many cases, the poorest of the poor, they must fight every day for their own economic survival, but they are showing a good measure of responsibility.

One of things that must be placed back on the agenda, once we start getting out of these troubling times, is the relationship between Africa and Europe. Both sides have a lot to gain from a stronger partnership. And, as I said several times, we can include the Chinese in the equation. They will gain a lot as well, if we are all together.

The UN's appeal must be heard

The UN Secretary-General launched yesterday an appeal for funds to help the developing countries to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic and to finance their socio-economic recovery. António Guterres stated very clearly that this pandemic is by far the deepest crisis the world has faced since World War II. It has many dimensions and all of them tremendously affect the weakest people in the poorest countries of the world. The amount he deems necessary is about $8 trillion US, meaning 10% of the global GDP.

I agree with the Secretary-General’s analysis, approach and amount he is looking for. But I am extremely pessimist as it regards to the response the richest countries will provide. Every country, in the better off regions of the world, is desperately looking for resources to deal with the impact of the Covid-19 within their own borders. The call for international solidarity is a distant call. It will not be heard. The developing world will be left to its own fate.

The developing countries that were better connected to the global economy will gradually re-establish those connections. It will take time for different reasons. The logistical chains of supply have been seriously disrupted, the demand in developed economies will remain weak for a good period and there will be an attempt to produce locally what was up to now imported from afar. International trade might take a new shape, to operate within smaller circles of nations.

The countries that were outside the global sphere of production and commerce will continue to struggle at subsistence level. Poverty will continue to be as widespread as it is now. The opportunities to go beyond the local level will not open. And we can easily guess that international cooperation and aid priorities will go further down in the multilateral agenda.

In both cases, food production for local consumption will become the central concern. Any assistance to the agricultural sector will make a difference. The other concern will be to maintain peace and security in societies that have been profoundly de-structured and further impoverished.

The media that matters is too busy with the Covid-19 progression in the most developed societies to give any serious echo to Antonio Guterres’s appeal. No media attention means additional hurdles in terms of money mobilisation. 

Independently of the success of this initiative, the Secretary-General did the right thing. He must be the moral voice of those who are too far from the wealthy and the powerful to be heard.  

Fighting corruption

Widespread corruption remains a major issue in some developing countries. It cannot be absent from the policy dialogue with our partner countries. It must be a very central topic and our common responsibility is not to run away from the issue. Diplomacy is no justification to ignore the fate of the populations that see their economy being capture by a few members of the political leadership.

Today, I had a long discussion about the matter and how it affects equitable growth and the fight against poverty. The starting point was the current situation in Zambia. And I was sad to note that I have seen better governance in that country. And unfortunately, it is just an example.

Mozambique´s enormous population growth challenges

After an agonizing day of hesitation and with great regret, I concluded I could not accept an invitation to deliver a talk in Maputo, at the end of May, on the vast population growth challenges Mozambique is confronted with. The date was not good as I have already a number of commitments around that time. I would have loved to do it. I was the first representative of the UN population agency (UNFPA) in that country, back in 1980. But besides that, Mozambique is a mirror of the situation many African countries face at present: very fast population growth rates, early marriage and teenage pregnancies, as well as very important internal migrations and unemployment issues.

The talk would be an opportunity to contribute to the reflection about the medium and long term implications of all these problems. It would also be an opportunity to acknowledge some of national efforts that the country is trying to implement. And it should also be another chance to call for deeper international partnerships with Africa in matters related to the links between population and development.

I hope these issues will come out loud and clear, in any case. 

Five good examples of development assistance

A brief note to put on record five good examples of commitment to international development assistance. In 2014 the following countries’ financial contributions to development assistance exceeded the agreed threshold of 0.7% of their GDP: United Kingdom, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden. Sweden, it should be added, was particularly generous. Its financial assistance to development programmes and projects reached 1.1% of its GDP.

These countries and 23 more make the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD. The average contribution of the DAC countries to development, also in 2014, remained well below the target – the 0.7% figure – at a mere 0.29% of GDP. 

Development co-operation requires leadership

In a discussion this afternoon about development co-operation the OECD Development Aid Committee President, Erik Solheim said that leadership is essential for change to occur.

He knows what he is talking about as he himself was an important agent of change in his home country, Norway.

But I have the impression that leadership in the area of development is lacking nowadays. After the Busan (Indonesia) conference in 2011, where new principles for aid assistance were agreed upon, too much emphasis has been placed on partnerships and very little on the responsibility to lead the process. And when everyone is in charge nobody leads. Without clear and responsible leadership we see the UN (UNDP) and OECD struggling to get heard and to make things to happen. Or, UNDP and OECD should be accepted as the leading players in the field of international co-operation.

Co-operation is indeed about partnerships. But someone has to guide the process. If not, each player will go about it as he/she sees fit. And that is at present the case.