UN General Assembly high-level week begins in the US — Anadolu Agency
New York, United States, will host the high-level week of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly on September 22–28. World leaders will discuss the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and around Iran, Security Council reform, climate finance, the Sustainable Development Goals and artificial intelligence regulation, Anadolu Agency reports.
The session was formally opened on September 8. It is chaired by Bangladeshi diplomat Khalilur Rahman, and its theme is “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations that Works for All.” By tradition, Brazil will speak first after the opening remarks, followed by the United States as the host country.
Wars and the Security Council
UN Secretary-General António Guterres will open the high-level week for the last time before his mandate ends on December 31. He said that the meetings in New York should create opportunities for in-person negotiations among leaders dealing with active crises.
Ukraine is among the key topics. In early September, US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spoke for more than three hours in Moscow with Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation, the aggressor state, but the talks produced no breakthrough. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy subsequently said that the war would continue, while the Kremlin allowed for the resumption of trilateral contacts with Washington without setting a date or venue.
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Participants are also expected to raise the issues of Gaza, Iran, Cyprus, the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, the situation in Myanmar and the security crisis in Haiti. UN Security Council members differ in their assessments of whether sanctions against Iran, reinstated through the “snapback” mechanism in September 2025, are legally valid. According to the agency, these disagreements have blocked agreement even on basic issues in the Security Council.
Climate, development and artificial intelligence
The session’s program includes a meeting on the Sustainable Development Goals on September 18, a meeting on climate action and a just transition on September 23, and a discussion of threats posed by rising sea levels to low-lying and island states on September 24. A meeting on pandemic prevention and preparedness is scheduled for September 25.
Guterres called artificial intelligence one of the main topics of his conversations with leaders. The UN plans to seek practical approaches to the safe, secure and responsible development of such systems, including determining cases where powerful technologies require enhanced safeguards.
A separate issue will be the search for Guterres’s successor. The new secretary-general is to take office on January 1, 2027, and informal contacts among delegations during the General Assembly may affect this process.
