With cascading crises casting a pall over the proceedings at this year’s UN General Assembly, Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova had this reminder on the first day of debate on Tuesday: “We cannot save our planet if we leave out the vulnerable — the women, the girls, the minorities.”
However, gender parity at the world’s pre-eminent forum of leaders still seems far out of sight. Eight women were set to speak at the UN General Assembly yesterday. That s more than double the number — five — of women that spoke across the first three days of the summit.
Yesterday, three vice presidents and five prime ministers — including Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina and New Zealand’s Jacinda Arden — were to take the rostrum or give their address in a prerecorded video.
Photo: AP / UN Web TV
“As the first female president in the history of my country, the burden of expectation to deliver gender equality is heavier on my shoulder,” Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan said.
When it comes to such equality, she said: “COVID-19 is threatening to roll back the gains that we have made.”
Hassan was the lone woman to address the General Assembly on Thursday.
Despite those 13 women making up less than 10 percent of speakers over the first four days, the 13 represent an increase from last year, when just nine women spoke over the course of the session. There were also three more female heads of state or heads of government — 24 — than there were at this point last year.
“There can be no democracy, no security and no development without one-half of the humankind,” Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid said on Wednesday, also underscoring women’s vulnerability in society.
The theme of vulnerability has been at the forefront during a week haunted by the ever-looming specters of climate change, COVID-19 and conflict. Most of the speeches have taken on the tenor of pleas issued at the precipice, batting away the summit’s theme of “building resiliency through hope.”
Dire predictions were not limited to the General Assembly. At a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday, the high-level officials urged stepped-up action to address the security implications of climate change and make global warming a key part of all UN peacekeeping operations.
They said warming is making the world less safe, pointing to Africa’s conflict-plagued Sahel region and Syria and Iraq.
Scores of leaders have already spoken, and many have left New York altogether. However, some of the most anticipated countries have yet to deliver their addresses: North Korea, Myanmar and Afghanistan — all perennially, but also lately much in the news — are expected to close out the session on Monday afternoon.
Yesterday promised fireworks, with a slate of speakers from countries roiled by internal and external conflict.
The president of the ethnically divided Cyprus was scheduled to open the proceedings, soon followed by a Lebanon also riven by internal strife.
The morning plenary was also to see addresses from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who was lambasted on Thursday in Azerbaijan’s speech in the aftermath of the Nagorno-Karabakh war.
The afternoon was to see both Albania and Serbia, perpetually at odds over Kosovo, as well as a Pakistan feeling pressure on its eastern border with India and western border with Afghanistan.
“Their victory has instilled a tremendous hope. It’s a shot in the arm, at a time when we are not even allowed to speak openly,” a former Kashmiri rebel who has fought against India said last week of the Taliban’s ascension in Afghanistan.
Pakistan and India, which go today, are historically eager users of the “right of reply” function, which allows diplomats to lob polemics defending their countries in response to speeches from unfriendly nations.
That window of opportunity opened last night, after the leaders’ speeches conclude.
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