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Key events

Patrick Wintour

Western leaders have gone on a charm offensive on the opening day of the UN general assembly as they were forced to defend their record in meeting the organisation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs), and insist that the war in Ukraine had not distracted them from this commitment to end global inequality.

At a special summit in New York amounting to a halfway stocktake on progress towards meeting the goals by the target date of 2030, all sides acknowledged there was little chance that the ambitious set of commitments set in 2015, including ending extreme poverty and safeguarding the environment, will be met on schedule.

A plea by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, for all sides to avoid recriminations about the cause of the failure and instead to use the two-day summit as a chance to make a global rescue plan was only partially met on the opening day.

The list of 17 SDGs, which includes 169 specific targets, was first adopted at the UN sustainable development summit in September 2015, and most assessments say only 15% of the targets are on track. The leaders adopted a 43-paragraph political declaration, brokered by Ireland and Qatar, that warned years of sustainable development gains were being reversed. It said:

Millions of people have fallen into poverty, hunger and malnutrition are becoming more prevalent, humanitarian needs are rising, and the impacts of climate change are more pronounced. This has led to increased inequality exacerbated by weakened international solidarity and a shortfall of trust to jointly overcome these crises.

“Instead of leaving no one behind, we risk leaving the SDGs behind … the SDGs need a global rescue plan,” Guterres told the summit.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said ‘a global rescue plan’ was needed to achieve the sustainable development goals. Photograph: Bianca Otero/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Human rights abuses are still being committed in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region more than 10 months after a ceasefire formally ended the bloody civil war, according to a group of UN experts.

The latest report by the UN’s International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia said the nation’s government was failing to protect its citizens from “grave and ongoing” human rights abuses being committed by militias and Eritrean troops, who fought alongside Ethiopia’s federal military and remain in border areas of Tigray.

These human rights abuses include sexual and gender-based violence “abetted or tolerated” by the Ethiopian government, according to the report, which was released on Monday.

It said a “transitional justice” process initiated by Ethiopia’s government did not meet international standards and expressed alarm over recent increases in violence in Oromia and Amhara, Ethiopia’s two most populous regions.

Children at a camp for displaced people in Tigray. Food aid to the war-battered region was halted in March, after officials were found to be stealing grain. Photograph: SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

The failure to implement a meaningful justice process was fostering a culture of impunity and heightening the risk of future atrocities, said the experts, who noted rising online hate speech in Ethiopia against ethnic and political groups and LGBT people.

“The conflict in Tigray, still not resolved in any comprehensive peace, continues to produce misery,” the report said.

Equally alarming, hostilities in Ethiopia are now at a national scale, with significant violations particularly in [the] Amhara region, but also ongoing in Oromia and elsewhere.

The risk to the state, as well as regional stability and the enjoyment of human rights in east Africa, cannot be overstated.

The conflict in Tigray, which erupted in November 2020 and spilled over into other regions of Ethiopia, was one of the bloodiest of recent times. It is believed to have killed hundreds of thousands of people and was characterised by massacres and rape.

About 5.4 million of Tigray’s population of 6 million still rely on humanitarian assistance, although food aid to the war-battered region has been paused since mid-March, after the uncovering of a huge, nationwide scheme by officials to steal donated grain. Food aid to the whole of Ethiopia has been on hold since June.

Rifts over Ukraine disrupt UN summit on crises in the global south

Julian Borger

This year’s UN general assembly is supposed to be about the global south, addressing the social and economic development issues that many of the world’s poorer countries felt were forgotten last year in the uproar over Ukraine.

That was the intention at least, but the global rifts caused by Russia’s invasion still threaten to take centre stage. The US and its western allies have acknowledged that they cannot take the broad support of the bulk of UN members for granted in opposing Moscow’s war without paying greater attention to the priorities of the UN’s Group of 77 (G77), a loose coalition of developing countries.

The coming “high-level week” at the general assembly began with a two-day meeting on sustainable development goals (SDGs). These 17 goals – such as the eradication of poverty and hunger, and the universal provision of good healthcare and education – were set out by UN member states in 2015, with a goal for their achievement by 2030.

This general assembly marks the halfway point in their progress, and the world is on track to meet only 12% of the targets. Half a billion people are likely still to be living in poverty in 2030. Nearly 100 million children will not be in school. In some areas, progress has gone into reverse. This week’s summit on Monday and Tuesday is intended to refocus concerted international effort on them.

Patrick Wintour

The half-time show in the US is normally associated with the football Super Bowl, superstars and adverts, but the UN in the form of the film director Richard Curtis put on its own version on Monday night in New York and blew the place away.

Curtis is of course in the optimism business – his glass is so permanently half full, it overflows – and the one hour show he helped put on at the Es Devlin designed UN Sustainable Development Goals pavillion included Orlando Bloom, Al Pacino, Dia Mirza, Forest Whitaker, Sabrina Elba, singers, poet laureates, football stars, Ecuadorian activists, UN goodwill ambassadors and inspirational politicians such as Mia Mottley, the Barbados prime minister.

It was determinedly upbeat that at the halfway point the UN could still meet the Sustainable Development Goals. Those goals set 15 years and due to be met in another 15 years are way off track, but the theme of the UN show, as Anima Mohammed, the UN deputy general secretary said was that games are won or lost in the second half.

Al Pacino gave permission for the adaptation of his legendary inspirational speech in Any Given Time in which an elderly manager tries to inspire his losing team together inch by inch “to claw themselves out of hell”.

More modestly Patrice Evra, introduced as the world’s greatest left back, said recovering from a half-time deficit was all about discipline and believing in yourself. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the Game of Thrones star, pleaded for both optimism and urgency about climate change since “every indicator indicates we are heading in the wrong direction. It is not winter that is coming, I am sorry. It is a terrible summer of suffering for too many people and places”.

He said:

Choices we make will have impact for thousands of years ahead. The time for excuses and baby steps are over.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma accompanied by the pianist and astro physist Amir Siraj led the audience on a musical journey through the mysteries of the universe.

Mottley took her audience away from her specialism, the intricacies of development finance and leveraging private capital. She said

It is hearts that move people and not always logic. Artists and musicians had a duty to communicate the need for change or else we will all have to look for a different planet to live on.

She said : “This world has perfected the art of the movement of global capital, but it does not see people to perfect the protection of migrants. Every religion says we must honour the dignity of every human life. How do we forget it when we walk into the corridors of power”. Don’t leave it to government those in power you have the agency of change.

On a night to recharge worn out if renewable batteries perhaps two young women injected the greatest charge, Salome Agbaroji, the Nigerian American youth poet and US youth poet laureate, drove the audience on a journey to an environmental paradise to what she called “the end zone, the beautiful place on our earth we call oasis”.

Finally: Helena Gualinga, a 22-year-old activist from the Kichwa Sarayaku community in the Amazon. She was intrinsic to a victory in a referendum in August to ban oil companies from continuing to drill in one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, the Yasuní national park. She said: “many people ask her what she will do next. All I can say is we will not stop here and neither should you”.

Some people say the UN does not have pulling power any more – and it is true some world leaders gave the general assembly a miss this year, but at this halfway point for the SDGs, those who showed up are definitely not giving up.

Zelenskiy to address world leaders at 77th UN general assembly

Good morning and welcome to our live blog covering the 77th session of the United Nations general assembly, where world leaders convene in New York amid a backdrop of the war in Ukraine, high food prices, a series of climate-related catastrophes, new political crises in west Africa and Latin America and economic instability.

Heads of state and government from at least 145 countries are expected to take the dais at this year’s general assembly, presided over by Trinidad and Tobago’s Dennis Francis. Among those scheduled to speak on Tuesday are Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the US president Joe Biden, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy – who is appearing at the UN in person for the first time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of his country.

But there are some notable absences. The leaders of the UK, France, China and Russia will not be attending, meaning Biden will the sole leader of the UN security council’s five permanent members to appear at the UN. Leaders from major countries such as India and Mexico are also slated to send ministers in their steads.

Last year’s UN general assembly session was dominated by the war in Ukraine, and representatives from Africa, Asia and Latin America – often called the global south – hope this year’s meeting will focus on their concerns about development instead. The 2023 general assembly marks a halfway point after the UN’s adoption of a collection of “sustainable development goals” (SDGs) aimed at tackling some of the most pressing global challenges – poverty, access to clean water, environmental protection, gender inequalities, and quality education. At current rates, not a single one will be achieved.

Here’s what we’ll be paying particularly close attention to today:

9am Eastern time. António Guterres, the UN’s secretary general, will deliver his state-of-the-world address at Tuesday’s opening of what is called the general debate.

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will be the first world leader to address the general assembly, in a tradition dating to 1955.

US president Joe Biden will address the assembly next, in a speech that is likely to repeat his criticisms of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and emphasise the US’s desire to address challenges in the developing world.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy will also speak at the general assembly on Tuesday, where he will aim to convince leaders from the global south to back Kyiv against Russia. Zelenskiy is also scheduled to speak at the UN security council meeting on Wednesday.

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is expected to use his speech to push for a deal to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea to be revived, after Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin withdrew from the UN-backed initiative.