 The 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly opens at the multilateral organization's headquarters in New York City. No single global crisis will dominate this session because the people of the world have seen no resolution to the war in Ukraine, a COVID-19 widespread economic instability and rising inequality, and the clear and present challenge of human-induced climate change. So what is on the agenda and what can we expect from this biggest of meetings of world leaders? And over the weekend, top officials from China and the United States held a quiet round of meetings in Malta. What are the key takeaways from the latest diplomatic efforts to cool tensions between the world's two largest economies? Salam, you're watching The Daily Debrief coming to you from the People's Dispatch Studios here in New Delhi. Before we get into the show, we take this opportunity to ask you to subscribe to our YouTube channel. The great debate at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this year is set to be more fragmented and polarized than ever before. The ongoing war in Ukraine, the lingering political and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly on the global south, the strengthening of regional blocks like the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and most recently the G77 plus China grouping, floods, fires and rising global temperatures that have already had devastating impact on vast swaths of the planet, nations reeling under debt and without the fiscal space to maneuver out of it. And of course, the economic power of China all form part of the patchwork background for this year's meeting. We are also at the midpoint towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals set in 2015 and largely ignored by the United States and its Western allies. All this has led to loud calls for restructuring both international financial architecture and reform multilateral bodies like the UN Security Council, backed as we reported this week by the current Secretary General of the Organization Antonio Guterres himself. With all this as a little bit of context, let's go over to Abdul now to see if he can boil down what the most critical of these issues that might come up in New York this week are. Abdul, as I was saying in the brief intro that I gave earlier, there's a lot going on in the world today and I think we've asked you to join us this afternoon to maybe try to simplify it for us in a way that we can digest as an audience. What exactly are the most critical aspects that you think might be discussed at the General Assembly this time around? Well, the UN General Assembly annual meet of course discusses all the major problems in the world. That should be that is that has been the practice and this time also is not going to be any different, of course. So, and everyone knows that at this moment the world is primarily obsessed with two major issues. Of course, one is the war in Ukraine and its larger implications across the globe, particularly on the third world countries, the countries of the global south, what we call it or the developing world, particularly its economic aspects. So, if you see the other summits or the meetings which has happened before, the multilateral meetings like G-77, before that G-20 and BRICS and so on and so forth, all of them had a discussion in and around this war in Ukraine. And this time also it is going to be raised by particularly, of course, different set of countries from different perspectives. So, that will be one. In fact, the document which is going to be adopted on Monday before the summit officially starts on Tuesday will also be focused around this issue. But this is not the only issue which the UN summit is going to discuss. There are, of course, major issues raised by the global south in particular about the rising concerns related to debt of the large number of countries, dozens of countries in the global south are on the verge of financially collapsing, primarily because of the kind of debt they have been subjected to, the kind of conditionalities they have been subjected to and particularly by the international monetary organizations, financial organizations dominated by the west. So, that is one major concern from the global south point of view. Of course, the climate issue is also going to be discussed very, you can say meticulously at this time and this is also part of the document as I said before, which will be adopted on Monday. So, UN General Secretary has raised the issue of all these issues in a document which was released earlier, much before the annual summit has started. And it seems that there is, by and large, there is a kind of consensus about at least addressing the issue in this official, you can say agenda document which is going to be adopted on Monday. This meeting is also going to discuss the, particularly from the third world perspective, the countries from the global south and particularly the countries, you can say in the West Asia and in some of the African countries, where there has been a growing feeling about UN being non-representative, UN being not bothered about the concerns of, which are basically related to these countries, particularly, for example, Iran, Syria, and other countries which basically have been subjected to consistent violation of UN charter. So, for example, Israel has attacked Syria on many occasions, Syria has had filed complaints in the United Nations, but on none of those occasions in United Nations Security Council has taken any notice of it. So, Iranians have also complained about how Israelis and the US have been basically violating, attempting to violate the regional peace or the Iran's basically security issues, national issues. And there has been attempt to, you can say, demolish the groups or the international organizations like IAEA, there is an attempt to influence it by the Western countries and the UN has not taken the issue seriously. So, these kind of issues from the African countries, as everyone knows, that there has been recent set of coups in part of Africa and the role the Western countries have played, of course, violates the basic UN charter. And most of the UN issues has failed to address the issues. So, to just to kind of sum it up, apart from the global issues which are, it seems there is a consensus between the West and the South about the financial implications of the Ukrainian war, the climate crisis, the debt. Apart from that, there are also going to be issues raised by the countries which think that UN has not been true to its mandate and there has been many compromises in the last. So, these issues, of course, are nothing new, but they are raised every year, but at least whenever they are raised, there seems to be some kind of political backing behind it. And given the fact that at this moment in the global politics, there seems to be a kind of clear cut division where the West has stopped kind of even voicing, even paying the lip service, which is usually plays a piece about the concerns of the global south early in earlier occasions. It seems there is a complete polarization at the global level and even among the permanent members of the Security Council. And that may play a major role in this summit as well. Last week or over the weekend, Abdul, we were talking about the G77 plus China grouping, which of course it is, it's called the G77, but it represents now over 80% of the world's population, 130 plus countries. Will we see some kind of consensus from these countries, which again primarily represent the global south like you were mentioning on issues like the Sustainable Development Goals, the targets that were set for 2030 when are halfway there. How do you see that aspect because the SDGs are something that as an agenda point have been highlighted by the UN Secretary General as well. Well, that is going to be the central issue of discussion. Of course, as I said before, the document which is going to be adopted on Monday is based around the reports prepared by the UN General Secretary and other UN institutions which basically claim the sustainable development goals which were adopted in 2015 have basically whatever the targets were, the 17 major goals and around 140 subgoals targets which needed to be achieved before 2030 to address the issues of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, inequality, climate concerns and so on and so forth. None of those issues are on target. In fact, only the report, the UN General Secretary report claims that only 15% of the 140 targets are on track and that too may derail any time if the world does not refocus its attention on the sustainable development goals. So, the fact that the only 15% goals are on target indicates that the majority of the countries in the world have failed to do what they committed when they adopted the SDGs in 2015. So, the report says for example that the SDG says that there will be no poverty by 2030 but the actual figures will be that more than 575 million people will be living under the poverty line by 2030 if the current pace of addressing poverty continues. It also says that around 80 to 84 million children will be out of the schooling system, it means they will not get any education which was basically there was a goal that there will be complete literacy, everyone will be in school by 2030. It says that if the current pace continues, the men with women equality which is one of the central objectives of the SDGs will take another 280 years, more than almost 300 years to be achieved materially. Of course, we are not talking about the notional concept of equality, this is the material equality you're talking about, even that is almost 300 years away if this pace continues. So, that shows that all these figures and facts basically show that SDGs have not been taken as seriously as required and that is going to be the focus of the discussion from Tuesday onwards when the world leaders are sitting and discussing the global issues in the UN summit. If we can briefly take another minute or so to just sum up, presumably a lot of this ignoring or not taking seriously enough of the SDGs is also influenced by the positions taken by the countries of the global north and the west in that sense seems to be at least, maybe we are in an echo chamber I don't know but it seems like the west is on a bit of a back foot today as it was even compared to maybe a year ago. How do you view the kind of debate progressing and are there any, can there be any realistic expectations of structural reform like even the UN Secretary General himself very clearly is saying? Well, that is one difficult question to answer, given the fact that the west in particular has adopted basically prioritized geopolitical issues or geo-strategic issues over the basic humanitarian issues which are the goal of this disease in the last few years, it seems that the west is not very serious about it. So if you see the number of countries, particularly the poorer countries being sanctioned by the west in particular, shows itself that these are the countries where the majority of the poor live, these are the countries where the hunger and other issues are there and it is the west basically prevents these countries from achieving, even moving towards that by imposing unilateral sanctions, not approved by UN but imposed by particular individual countries like US and European Union. These are the, and the number of wars they have waged in the last few years and the kind of destructive policies they have promoted. Apart from that, the reversals on the basic commitments to international regime like WTO and climate commitments, they talk about Paris commitments but they fail to provide the basic economic aid which is required to carry forward those goals. So all these things, if you see club them together, it seems that the rest, as I said before, has prioritized geo-strategic and geopolitical goals over the humanitarian needs of the world and that basically is the basic reason, one of the basic reasons which defeats the entire objective of this disease and derails it from its real actual path. Alright, thanks very much Abdul for setting the stage for what should be an interesting week in New York City at the United Nations General Assembly and of course we will hopefully have you back on the shore to kind of sum up if there are any real developments that emerge out of this meeting. In the latest attempt to ease a tense relationship, the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, Jake Sullivan met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi who is an important figure both in the Chinese Communist Party as well as the Chinese Government. Session to place in Malta and could perhaps set the tone for a meeting, a future meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden later on in the year. A White House readout on the meeting said several key issues were discussed including of course peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. Despite hopes to the contrary, China-US relations have nosedived under the Biden administration and we go across now to Anish to put all of this into some kind of context for us. Anish, we were talking previously to Abdul Rahman about the UN General Assembly and was slightly to happen there as well as on the sidelines. In a sort of similar context, particularly the economic power that China wields today is a crucial aspect in global politics. Given the recent meeting between the US National Security Advisor and the Chinese in Malta, how do you view sort of the scenario at present? Were there any positive developments from the meeting that you would care to talk about in terms of what the two biggest economies in the world are doing and whether this sort of escalation from the United States of all kinds of pressure on China is likely to continue or will we see a potential cooling of relations? Well, the one, the meeting with Wang Yi by the National Security Advisor is not really, you know, it's not lacking substance, obviously there was a lot to be talked about, but the outcomes are quite easy because we are not very sure what it can actually lead to. There are no commitments, obviously, but there were very clear statements being made, especially from the Chinese side who told the US basically that there is a red line when it comes to Taiwan and the US cannot cross it. And that was pretty much at the heart of the discussions there and the fact that the foreign minister is meeting the National Security Advisor and not his counterpart also shows that this was more of a defense security kind of meeting. And so definitely recent kind of overtures that you've seen on the military front, especially across the Taiwan Strait and also, you know, in the general vicinity of Taiwan, not just from China side, but definitely from the US and Taiwan side, especially Taiwan, which has started dragging in a lot of other foreign players in Japan and Philippines and, you know, also people that do not have any kind of claims to the island who has a different kind of history, it's not the kind of history that requires, you know, is positive in many ways. And definitely provoking the Chinese side to conduct joint military drills, increasing naval operations in the region. And even, you know, the menu was by Air Force military from both sides have actually created a situation that is quite tense and we have talked about this, you know, Taiwan being turned into a sort of flashpoint between two great powers and that is definitely what the Chinese also wants to avoid. And we are seeing that the Chinese wants to make very clear that there is a proper China policy that is not something that just China, but also the government in Taiwan, the constitution in Taiwan, which also serves the Republic of China also and which the United States has endorsed in the 1970s, and that those pretty much the entire world divides by and there is literally no question about South China, but definitely the US has been pandering to a lot of decisions and that is not something that Chinese will stand by. We were also talking about the sort of growing pressures on the West in many ways, countries of the global South kind of coming together, whether it's regional organizations or groupings like the G77 plus. In the China-US context, it's not a good thing for the rest of us that these two great powers as you mentioned are not getting along. Do you see, given the General Assembly is also meeting and so many multilateral meetings are taking place, do you see the opinions of other nations, whether it's from Asia or allies of the United States coming into play in these conversations? And sort of working towards what is for maybe a larger good? Well, it's very difficult to say because even as we speak, the United Nations General Assembly is pretty much becoming a battleground of sorts. We are seeing the landscape being platformed by the West a lot. We are seeing the Ukraine issue being raged up quite heavily and there is definitely a certain level of other, you know, obviously certain other issues that the United States is trying to raise, which are not, especially the recent input in summit and that is definitely not going down well with not just Russia or North Korea, but also China, because a large part of that is also targeted at the Chinese influence in the region or its allies in the region. And that is definitely going to have its own impact and that's pretty much why we see the Chinese vice president and not the president or the foreign minister being part of the assembly. And that clearly shows that the Chinese and even with the meeting with Lincoln that is happening right now on the sidelines of the General Assembly, we clearly seeing a certain level of wariness. Obviously, China wants to talk, wants to see diplomatic channels and options available at all times at every given chance, but it really does not trust the Americans to go through with a lot of their promises. We have seen in the past that that has been, you know, a lot of promises being made or even commitments being made by the US has been met with other sorts of provocations, which kind of contravene the spirit of those comments in the recent, you know, in the previous set of summits. So that is not something the Chinese is not aware of it, pretty much is aware of it and is quite wary of whatever the US has to offer at this point. All right, Anish, we'll leave it there for now. Thanks very much for that update. And with that, we bring to a close this episode of the daily debrief and begin our week's coverage of the news beyond the headlines. As always, we take this opportunity to invite you to head to our website peoplesdispatch.org for details on these stories and all of the other work we do. Don't also forget to give us a follow on the social media platform of your choice. We'll be back same time, same place tomorrow. Until then, thanks as always for watching. Stay safe. Goodbye.