High-Level Week of 80th Anniversary UN General Assembly to Start in New York
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The high-level week of the 80th anniversary session of the UN General Assembly begins in New York on Tuesday with the participation of about 150 heads of state and government, as well as foreign ministers.
Within a week, international leaders are set to discuss key global challenges: peace consolidation, sustainable development, human rights protection, gender equality, artificial intelligence management, combating infectious diseases and mental disorders, as well as the effects of climate change.
The event is dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the United Nations, and its central theme is "Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development, and human rights."
Representatives of 193 UN member states, observers from the Vatican and the State of Palestine, as well as the European Union, will take part in upcoming debates.
Speeches will be delivered by heads of states, governments and international delegations. High-level sessions, accompanied by hundreds of bilateral meetings and theme-tuned events on the sidelines of the assembly, will be held from September 23 to 29, with a scheduled day-off on Sunday.
The general debate will open with speeches delivered by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and President of the 80th session Annalena Berbok.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will be the first among world leaders to take the floor, which is a tribute to a long-standing tradition. It dates back to the fact that it was a representative of this Latin American state, Oswaldo Aranha, the then Brazilian foreign minister, who led the work of the first and second special sessions of the General Assembly in 1947.
About 30 speakers are scheduled to speak on the first day of the debate, including the leaders of Argentina, Vietnam, Iran, Jordan, Qatar, Poland, Serbia, Turkey and other countries. On the second day, there will be about 40 speakers, including the presidents of France, Ukraine, Finland and Slovakia.
The Russian delegation is led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who is scheduled to deliver a speech on September 27. Lavrov will be also taking part in multilateral meetings within the framework of BRICS, the CSTO, the Group of Twenty and the Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS earlier that dozens of bilateral and multilateral meetings are being worked out with Lavrov, as is usually the case at the General Assembly, including with the US side.
