From Biden to Burhan: The Key UNGA Speeches We'll Be Watching

Plus, a special discount code for full access to our UNGA coverage

About 140 world leaders are scheduled to address the opening of the 79th United Nations General Assembly. That’s a lot of speeches.

But not to fear!

On this edition of To Save Us From Hell Anjali Dayal and I preview some of the most anticipated speeches of UNGA. From inspirational and high-minded addresses by moral heavyweights to cringeworthy speeches by coup leaders and war criminals, we break down some of the key speeches that will drive the agenda during UN week. Consider this is your preview of the United Nations General Assembly Speech-a-thon.

The full episode and full transcript is available exclusively to paid subscribers.

We're running an UNGA special!

Visit this link or click below to get a discounted paid subscription. You’ll unlock this episode and all future episodes of To Save Us From Hell — as well as our full UNGA coverage on Global Dispatches. The promo will run through the end of September.

Here’s an excerpt, edited for clarity

Mark Leon Goldberg: I’m looking at the speakers list right now. The next one that I am really looking towards after President Biden’s speech is Iran, later in the day. Masoud Pezeshkian is the new president of Iran. He took over after winning election, following the death in a helicopter crash of the more hard-line Ebrahim Raisi. So, this is Pezeshkian’s debut to the world. He does have a reputation and a political background as being less of a hardliner and more of a moderate in the Iranian political context. Of course, there are many political forces in Iran. And Iran is in this proxy battle with the United States and Israel in the region. So, his remarks, frankly, will be important to hear and to parse.

Anjali Dayal: It is a big stage to get for your first couple of months as leader of a country. And so it’ll be very interesting to see what chooses to highlight, right? Whether that’s contra U.S. policy, as has often been the case with Iran speakers at the General Assembly in the past, or whether it’s a sort of different vision for regional politics.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And much like many of these speeches, I would imagine, it really is going to be influenced on what happened the day before in Gaza. If there’s another massacre, the speeches will have one tone. If, by some miracle, we get this elusive ceasefire, the speeches will have another tone.

Ok… I’m Just looking at the list speakers in front of me. Anjali, what other highlights, are there for you on Tuesday or Wednesday of UNGA week?

Anjali Dayal: I mean, so two things I think. One is that we’ve got a number of small island nations speaking on the first two days. In the past couple of years, they’ve tended to be slated a little later in the week when people basically stop watching and stop paying attention. But we’ve got the Maldives, we’ve got Naru, we’ve got Seychelles.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Marshall Islands!

Anjali Dayal: Marshall Islands!

Mark Leon Goldberg: I’m just shouting country names as I spot the small island states on the first two days of this list. But yes, go on.

Anjali Dayal: Some of the biggest UN General Assembly moments in the last couple of years have come from small island nations. I’m thinking about the rising star of Mia Mottley of Barbados over the last couple of years. You can look at her 2019 General Assembly speech as one of the moments where she explodes onto international consciousness as someone who has the moral voice of a whole legion of people who are directly imperiled by our failure to take action on climate change. It will be really interesting to hear what these small nations are going to use that platform for, when they’re sprinkled in amongst leaders who sometimes get more energy, more oxygen, more air.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And these small island states do, around the UN, have a moral heft that other countries don’t for the fact that their existence is very directly imperiled by climate change. We talk about climate change as “existential threat.” Well, it is. But it’s most urgent for those small island states. And I have to imagine that they will also be focused on a key High-Level Meeting that’s happening later in the week at the UN on sea-level rise. I do wonder, now that I’m thinking conspiratorially, if the front loading of these small island states was purposefully arranged so as to give momentum towards that high-level meeting on sea-level rise on Wednesday.

Anjali Dayal: Yeah, that’s such a good question, in part I think because I don’t think we have to be conspiracists to think about wanting to foreground positive change around multilateral questions of the environment. The foregrounding of small island nations is of a piece with two big optimistic things that have happened in the last year surrounding global climate governance. Last year, the passage of the UN High Seas Treaty was heralded as a big development in terms of ensuring the global commons. And then we talked in an episode a couple of weeks ago about an election at the International Seabed Authority to demonstrate global will around tamping down on deep-sea mining. And so especially in the context of so many things not going so well, wanting to highlight things that might go well, and to highlight the stakes of things that should go better for small island nations is really critical.

To get the full episode and full transcript you’ll need a paying subscription. But not to worry! We’re running a promo until the end of UNGA. Get a discounted subscription here for immediate access to the full transcript and episode below the fold. You’ll get full access to all we have to offer here on Global Dispatches.