Do everything to try to bridge the gap between emerging countries and Westerners, which the war in Ukraine has revealed and widened. The debates of the UN General Assembly, which begin Tuesday, September 19, in New York, will take place in the shadow of the fighting which continues to rage, nineteen months after the Russian invasion. In the midst of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, the conflict should be addressed head-on by the American presidents, Joe Biden, and the Ukrainian presidents, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the opening of the discussions. Diplomats from Western countries, like their UN colleagues, have, however, never stopped insisting that the concerns of poor countries, like those of emerging countries, would be at the center of the work of the approximately 140 heads of state and government expected, out of 193 member states.
Kept away from the G20 summit, organized ten days ago in New Delhi, Volodymyr Zelensky will himself be keen to plead his cause to the many leaders of countries known as the Global South, who refuse to choose their side, between Russia and Ukraine. After a speech from the podium on Tuesday, he will participate in a meeting of the Security Council on Wednesday, devoted to the war which is tearing his country apart. “The Ukrainian president is playing big”warns Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group think tank: “He could target certain leaders of emerging countries if he does not moderate his tone against Russia and the UN. If he focuses on defending the UN Charter and on peace, which several of them are demanding, he could, on the contrary, make new allies. »
To date, Kiev and its Western allies seem to have given up on organizing a new meeting, after those in Copenhagen and Jeddah, on the “peace plan” presented by Mr. Zelensky a year ago at the G20 summit in Bali. While 35 member states, including 17 Africans, China and India, refrained from condemning Moscow in the aftermath of the invasion, the idea is to avoid as much as possible confrontation between Westerners and countries of the South, of which Moscow and Beijing often claim to be the leaders. For Catherine Colonna, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who leads the French delegation on behalf of Emmanuel Macron, the Global South is also a “erroneous expression” : “The planet is vast, it is diverse, and when I hear the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs talk about the Global South as if Russia were part of the South, it never fails to challenge me. I find that this is literally something inaccurate, perhaps even that it is a misleading expression and is intended to deceive you. »
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