NEW YORK CITY: The war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza loomed large over the opening of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, as its newly elected president, Annalena Baerbock, called on world leaders to confront global suffering with a renewed sense of urgency, unity and resolve.
“Can we celebrate while parents in Gaza are watching their children starve?” she asked in a stark address that captured the somber tone of what she described as “no ordinary session” of the UN’s main deliberative body.
Her remarks came amid a backdrop of mounting global crises, wars, displacement, hunger, rising sea levels, democratic backsliding, and growing skepticism about the effectiveness of multilateralism.
Baerbock, a former foreign minister of Germany and the first woman to preside over the General Assembly in nearly two decades, delivered a wide-ranging critique of the international system’s failures, invoking the humanitarian suffering in countries from Afghanistan to Ukraine, Darfur to the Pacific Islands.
“Instead of celebrating,” she said of the occasion of the UN’s 80th anniversary, “one might rather ask: where is the United Nations, which was created to save us from hell?”
While acknowledging the widespread frustration with the institution, Baerbock insisted it still has a vital role to play.
“Our world is in pain. But imagine how much more pain there would be without the United Nations,” she said, citing as examples of its successes the life-saving assistance provided by the World Food Programme to 125 million people, and UNICEF’s efforts to keep 26 million children in school.
She pledged to press forward with implementation of the “Pact for the Future” that was adopted by world leaders in September last year, advance the “UN80” reforms agenda, and strengthen the institution’s capacity to deliver on its founding mission.
She also questioned the UN’s own internal dynamics, pointing out that in eight decades no woman has ever served as secretary-general.
“If girls in Afghanistan or parents in Gaza can wake up, in the darkest hours of life, and push forward, then so can we,” she said. “We owe it to them. But we owe it also to ourselves because, excellencies, there is simply no alternative.”
The theme for this year’s General Assembly, “Better Together: Eighty Years and More for Peace, Development, and Human Rights,” underscores a call for renewed global cooperation. But Baerbock warned that without concrete action, the world risks descending into ever-deeper fragmentation.
She urged member states to seize this moment to modernize and revitalize the UN, not only through procedural reforms but also stronger efforts to deliver on peace, sustainable development and human rights.
“Let us come together, especially in the moments we would like to give up, to respond to those desperate calls from around our world,” she said.
This same sense of urgency carried through in remarks by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who earlier in the day unveiled a major report titled “The Security We Need: Rebalancing Military Spending for a Sustainable and Peaceful Future.”
Against a backdrop of fresh conflict and humanitarian stresses and strain around the world, Guterres warned that excessive military expenditure is undermining the pursuit of long-term peace and development worldwide.
In 2024, military spending surged to a record $2.7 trillion globally, which is more than 13 times the level of official development assistance from wealthy countries, and 750 times the core budget of the UN.
“This trajectory is unsustainable,” Guterres said. “Lasting security cannot be achieved by military spending alone.”
The report, requested under the Pact for the Future, delivers three core messages: military spending is crowding out critical investments in human development; redirection of even a fraction of global defense budgets could close urgent financing gaps in education, healthcare and climate resilience; and practical steps, including greater budget transparency and a diplomacy-first approach, are needed to shift global priorities.
“Excessive military spending does not guarantee peace — it often undermines it,” Guterres warned. “A more secure world begins by investing at least as much in fighting poverty as we do in fighting wars.”
Guterres called on governments to refocus their budgets on long-term stability and dignity, warning that continuing imbalances would only deepen the crises that multilateral institutions are already struggling to effectively address.
With this call for rebalancing and recommitment, Guterres echoed his own remarks from earlier in the day during the closing of the 79th session of the General Assembly.
Reflecting on the past year, he described a world gripped by intersecting crises: “conflicts, divisions, inequalities, poverty, injustices, displacement, hunger — and another year of record-breaking heat.”
He stressed that the General Assembly had played a critical role in efforts to navigate these challenges, pointing in particular to the adoption of the Pact for the Future, initiatives designed to end child labor, efforts to mitigate the effects of small arms on development, and a renewed emphasis on international humanitarian law.
As the UN enters its 80th year, Guterres urged nations to return to the postwar spirit of 1945, when countries came together “to consider what we could achieve by standing as one.” This founding UN spirit, he said, remains essential eight decades later.
“There is much to do and the road ahead is uncertain,” he added. “So as we mark our 80th anniversary, let’s carry this spirit forward and ensure we continue rebuilding trust and delivering results and peace for all people, everywhere.”
The high-level week of the 80th session of the General Assembly will take place later this month in New York, where world leaders will gather to debate urgent global priorities.
With public trust in global governance eroding, the message from Baerbock and Guterres was unambiguous: the very future of multilateralism is at stake and the world cannot afford another lost year.
