UN General Assembly
2020

As we mull over current realities this year, what are the new, promising, tidings that we can invoke apart from the earnest pleas and petitions for higher efficacy that are emphasized solemnly almost every year. Alas, what is new in our world this year is the depressing calamity; the huge loss of life that COVID-19 has and continues to incur globally. And albeit its agonizing dimensions, the Pandemic has starkly exposed the structural flaws and deficiencies of the prevailing, precarious, economic and security “global order”. It has debunked the spurious explanations and narratives peddled in the past to embellish and rationalize a largely dysfunctional global order. Indeed, in a rather perverted sense, the Pandemic constitutes a wake-up call; a costly reminder for us to mend our ways. Distinguished Participants,