UN General Assembly
2024

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, Distinguished Delegates, I extend my congratulations to His Excellency Philemon Yang on assuming the Presidency of the 79th session of the General Assembly. Let me also pay tribute to Secretary-General António Guterres for his dedication to global peace and prosperity. (State of the world in 2024) The year 2024 has sadly earned the distinction of being the most conflict-ridden year since World War II. Across the globe, from Ukraine to the Middle East, conflict and division have torn at the fabric of human dignity. Two billion people, or roughly 1 in 4, reside in conflict zones; 310 million people require humanitarian assistance worldwide, and more than 120 million, or 1 in 70, are refugees. Meanwhile, records suggest that we are brushing dangerously close to the critical threshold of 1.5 Celsius degrees. Most worrying of all, the international community seems to be losing the sense of what these numbers really stand for: real lives disrupted, families displaced, futures lost, and a planetary crisis looming.