The Conflicts Competing For Attention At The United Nations
When world leaders met at the UN General Assembly in September, they concentrated on the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan. An analysis of their speeches highlights the relative importance that different groups of states placed on each of these crises.
When world leaders gathered at the UN for the annual high-level debate in the General Assembly in September, the overriding topic of concern was global peace and security. While politicians and diplomats trooped between meetings on topics ranging from disease to UN reform, all were conscious that the situation in the Middle East was deteriorating as Israel launched new attacks on Hizbollah in Lebanon. In bilateral meetings, participants fretted about the parlous state of the international system and the UN’s apparent inability to tackle crises.
This pervasive nervousness also shone through many of the speeches that national leaders gave in the General Assembly. Over 130 presidents and prime ministers spoke at the UN, followed by sundry deputy leaders, foreign ministers and other dignitaries. Most of their interventions caused hardly a ripple as – like every year – a gradually dwindling number of diplomats hung around to listen after U.S. President Joe Biden had made his appearance. Many speakers aimed their remarks primarily at domestic audiences. Still, by surveying these speeches in aggregate, it is possible to spot patterns that give a sense of the priorities and overall mood of the UN membership.
Although the General Assembly is more often than not a bystander in major crises, it has long been cited as a channel for “world public opinion” on matters of war and peace. This role is particularly noteworthy after a year in which many UN members have argued not only over specific crises, but over which conflicts are most important at a time when violence is on the rise globally. Many non-Western countries have accused the U.S. and its allies of failing to show the same level of concern about civilian suffering in Gaza as they have demonstrated about civilian hardship and deaths in Ukraine. Conversely, Western officials grumble that many UN members now seem to be purposefully ignoring Russia’s aggression against Ukraine to avoid offending Moscow. UN officials, humanitarian workers and some media outlets have complained that the Gazan and Ukrainian crises combined have overshadowed mass suffering elsewhere, not least in Sudan, where over ten million have been displaced in two years.
Crisis Group has tallied references to the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan in September’s General Assembly speeches.
These claims and counter-claims tend to rest on all sides’ emotions and instincts. To try to quantify the level of concern among UN member states about these various crises – and trends in what they had to say about them – Crisis Group has tallied references to the Middle East (including Gaza and Lebanon), Ukraine and Sudan in September’s General Assembly speeches. Although counting mentions in high-level addresses is far from an exact science, it does offer a useful yardstick of relative diplomatic significance. These three stood out by a long way as the most frequently cited conflicts, even if other crises, such as that in Haiti, also got some attention. Some 109 of the 190 UN member states and three other actors (the EU, Palestine and the Holy See) that made speeches at the Assembly actually mentioned all three – sometimes in a single sentence – but the attention to each case varied markedly.
The situation in the Middle East was the most widely cited crisis, with 144 UN members and the EU bringing it up. In many cases, leaders simply referred to the need for a ceasefire or reduction of violence, without going into specifics. Nonetheless, 28 – mostly Latin American and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference – specifically accused Israel of genocide (see map 1). The charge had little impact on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who spoke at the UN on 27 September and accused it of institutional anti-Semitism. Shortly after he finished his blistering speech, news broke that an Israeli airstrike had killed Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.
Ukraine received less attention than Gaza. A total of 116 speakers mentioned the war – fewer than in last two years – but many did so tentatively. Fifty-one managed to refer to Ukraine without naming Russia as a party to the conflict, let alone an aggressor (see map 2). UN members from outside Europe who mentioned the war tended to make broad-brush calls for diplomacy, without delving into the risks or the mechanics involved. Western officials noted that the overall focus on Ukraine in the General Assembly was lower than in 2022 and 2023. They were further frustrated that China and Brazil persuaded a group of thirteen other countries from the so-called Global South – including some, like Mexico and Kenya, that are sympathetic to Kyiv – to sign a communiqué calling for a diplomatic process toward a ceasefire without safeguarding Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
In the run-up to the high-level week, the U.S. and a group of European allies had made a determined attempt to push Sudan up the agenda at the General Assembly, hosting a cluster of side events on the humanitarian and political aspects of the civil war. Some observers – reportedly including Sudanese diplomats – suspected that these events bespoke an effort to shift attention away from Gaza, but it also reflected genuine disquiet around the UN that the organisation has done too little about the war since it erupted in 2023. In the event, President Biden got the ball rolling by referencing a ceasefire in Sudan, but only 60 UN members and the EU raised the war in their speeches, and only a minority of African states mentioned it (see map 3). Diplomats told Crisis Group that it was not a major topic of backroom conversation, concluding that the escalation in the Middle East had diverted the focus.
By the end of the high-level week, UN members had certainly devoted a lot of words to Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan but there was little sign of real diplomatic progress on any of them. Crisis Group’s analysis suggests that the situation in the Middle East has – as predicted – reduced but did not completely erase UN members’ attention to Ukraine. Other crises were largely confined to the margins of discussion, although speakers frequently flagged their regional concerns in addition to the most-referenced crises. Five of the seven members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, for example, raised the war in Myanmar, while 22 of 33 states from Latin America pointed to the post-election crisis in Venezuela. A total of eight speakers from coastal West African states in turn addressed the risks posed by mounting jihadist activities in the Sahel. As Crisis Group noted before the high-level week, the UN still has major humanitarian roles – and occasional opportunities for political engagement – in some conflicts that gain less global attention than Ukraine or Gaza.
In the meantime, a lot of UN members can at least agree that the institution is not doing its job on peace and security properly. One hundred flagged the need for Security Council reform in their speeches, a record compared to the speeches given at the General Assembly in recent years. That does not mean that Council reform is at hand, but it does imply that a growing number of states doubt the status quo in New York is tenable.