UNGA Week Opens as Leaders Emphasize 'Better Together' in Global Agenda

The United Nations General Assembly's annual high-level week is underway in New York as presidents, prime ministers and other top officials from 193 member states gather to address a global audience. This year's gathering centers on the theme “Better Together,” emphasizing unity, solidarity and collective action on climate, security, development and governance.

The centerpiece is the General Debate, in which each country’s leader or designee is allotted up to 15 minutes to present a state-of-the-world address, outline priorities and report on domestic progress. While the debate is largely a sequence of speeches, rebuttals are allowed at the end of each long day, and some nations have in the past engaged in multiple rounds.

Beyond the speeches, much diplomacy happens in bilateral meetings between high-ranking officials from two countries and in ministerial talks led by foreign ministers. Bilateral conversations are a staple of UNGA, offering private channels for negotiating agreements, easing tensions and advancing aid or trade deals away from the main podium.

On the Security Council, the week’s agenda includes a high-wattage session on artificial intelligence. The council’s five permanent members with veto power—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States—are joined by 10 elected non-permanent members. The General Assembly elects the E10 for two-year terms, in seats allocated by region. Calls for reform are a perennial feature of UNGA discourse, with particular focus on expanding permanent membership and addressing the lack of seats for Africa and the Latin America–Caribbean region.

Climate and development officials head into a multiyear push as COP30 approaches. The U.N. climate conference is slated for November in Belem, Brazil, underscoring the urgency of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a threshold central to the Paris agreement. The planet has warmed about 1.3 degrees so far, according to U.N. assessments. At the same time, the Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015 as a 15-year action plan, remain a yardstick for progress, though momentum has slowed in many areas.

Small island developing states (SIDS) are a recurring focus of UNGA, highlighting climate vulnerability and the existential threats posed by rising seas and intensifying storms. The gathering also features debates around regional and global groupings, including the Group of 77 and China, now with 134 members, which represents developing-country interests within the U.N. The BRICS coalition—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—has expanded to include countries such as Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates, signaling a broader mix of developing economies seeking greater influence in global governance.

Non-governmental organizations and Least-Developed Countries (LDCs) rely on the Assembly to amplify their voices on poverty, health, climate finance and technology transfer. The LDC designation currently covers 44 nations, defined by extremely low income and vulnerability. International financial institutions—the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund—remain a focal point of discussion, with critics and supporters debating how to adapt Bretton Woods-era architecture to a fast-changing global economy.

The core vocabulary of the UNGA week—multilateralism, multipolarity and multistakeholder approaches—frames the conversation about how to pursue shared norms and rules in a deeply interconnected world. Multilateralism remains a central thread of the Organization, even as actors push for new forms of cooperation that incorporate governments, businesses and civil society.

Within this broad agenda, the two-state solution for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict endures as a reference point for many speakers, dating back to the Oslo framework and reaffirmed in U.N. discussions. The week also highlights South–South cooperation as a pathway for development, particularly through knowledge sharing, technology transfer and climate finance that involve countries across the Global South.

In sum, the UNGA week in New York brings together a spectrum of issues and actors, with day-after-day diplomacy shaping what comes next in climate action, humanitarian relief, development commitments and geopolitical alignments. While the speeches set the tone, much of the work proceeds in bilateral meetings, negotiations and behind-the-scenes committee work that will determine concrete steps in the months ahead.