Ireland’s president sends a message to fellow heads of state and government as they ready for New York.
Later this month, heads of state and government from across the world will gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. We shall meet in the gravest circumstances.
Amid a discourse dominated globally and regionally by the politics of fear, arms production has replaced activity to address the deepest human suffering. The world is failing to take the immediate action required to tackle our interlocking global crises of hunger, poverty, climate change, inequality and biodiversity loss, each exacerbated by conflict.
We know what actions are needed. We have made commitments which have not been fulfilled.
‘Stalled or regressing’
In 2015, global leaders collectively agreed—through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement—to co-operate in responding to the consequences of climate change and to the challenge of sustainable living. These agreements represented a shared blueprint for peace and development, founded on ethics and drawing on human rights and dignity. Together, they released an intergenerational hope that we were going to change our assumptions as to how we saw the connections among society, economy and ecology.
Yet, nine years later, delivery on these commitments has been so much less than what was proposed. Just 17 per cent of the SDGs are on track. Half of the 17 goals are showing ‘minimal or moderate progress’, while over a third are ‘stalled or regressing’. In 2022 an additional 23 million people were pushed into extreme poverty and over 100 million more were suffering from hunger than in 2019. Meanwhile, nearly 60 per cent of countries faced abnormally high food prices in that same year, exacerbating hunger and food insecurity.
It is the most vulnerable who are most at risk and this includes children inhabiting the most populous continent. On malnourishment, we have regressed 15 years. According to the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, the recent severe drought affecting swaths of southern Africa has left almost 300,000 children threatened with acute malnutrition across six countries. If current trends continue, 582 million people will be chronically undernourished in 2030, half of them in Africa. Wars are further upending millions of lives, driving record figures of 37.5 million refugees and nearly 120 million forcibly displaced people around the world.
Debt crisis
All these challenges are exacerbated by the still-unresolved issue of debt. Southern Africa, with its burden of debt, has no ‘fiscal space’ to deal with the challenges I have outlined, nor the consequences of climate change for which it was not responsible.
The severity of this problem has been recognised by the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, who in July launched A world of debt: A growing burden to global prosperity. This report shows that 3.3 billion people—not far off half of humanity—are living in countries that spend more on debt interest than on health. In Guterres’ words, ‘Half our world is sinking into a development disaster, fuelled by a crushing debt crisis.’
This is underscored by a recent report from Norwegian Church Aid, which found that servicing of debt exceeded total social spending (on health, education and social protection combined) in 33 countries. Debt servicing exceeded education spending in 104 countries, health spending in 116 and social-protection spending in 107.
Yet while the poor suffer, shareholders in the military-industrial order are enjoying historic profits. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has reported that world military expenditure increased to a total of $2.44 trillion in 2023, the highest SIPRI has ever recorded.
Summit of the Future
It is as if the world has become desensitised by the daily loss of life—so much of it avoidable—that it has descended into a passivity which includes an ever-decreasing respect for international law. Indeed, the question-mark hanging over the survival of international law and its associated institutions makes this month’s Summit of the Future, convened by Guterres, a crisis meeting by any standard.
The summit, to be held during the UN General Assembly, will underline the urgent need for enhanced international co-operation to address climate change, poverty and inequality, while also tackling the impacts of conflict, global health crises and food insecurity. In New York, I shall suggest that we are wrestling with the consequences—foreseen and unforeseen—of a ‘globalisation from above’, led by the powerful, without transparency as to the consequences for citizens in general or the planet and future generations.
What is needed is a ‘globalisation from below’, addressing the neglected concerns and reflecting the movements pursuing an ethical engagement with the global issues. Led by those on the ground, such an initiative can invigorate the UN, pursue food sufficiency and deliver the universal basic services which will enhance democracy, improve participation and engender the transparent official leadership we need.
To recover and rebuild trust, individual countries must support the fulfilment of the SDGs—particularly ‘zero hunger’. Yet how should we honour the commitments made in 2015 to achieve the goals by 2030? We can do so by ensuring our words ring with authenticity—that action follows commitment, that we redouble our efforts to meet the change demanded by the present so that we do not jeopardise future generations, and that we have the courage to confront those who seek to accumulate without limit or responsibility.
Agreed pact
The UN cannot meet the principles of its founding charter with the philosophy that drove the postwar Bretton Woods institutions. It needs to be remodelled for the future, giving agency to Africa, Asia and Latin America. This requires governance reforms—including to the Security Council to make it more representative. It requires, too, an agreed pact resulting from the Summit of the Future that is actionable, practicable and achievable but ambitious.
We have an opportunity at the summit to resolve collectively to make this the decade in which we took action to tackle, once and for all, the scourge of global hunger, in recognition of the solidarity that binds us as humans. We must support such important initiatives as the campaign recently launched by the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to end hunger and poverty. This is an acknowledgement of the responsibility we share for our vulnerable planet and the fundamental dignity of all those who live on it.
By bolstering our collective efforts to guarantee that the SDGs are achieved on time, we can promote an inclusive global discourse. Fostering a renewal of trust and solidarity, making a new beginning among peoples, countries and generations, has the potential to restore faith in a reinvigorated multilateral system that can deliver peace and sustainability and confront our shared challenges.
As they prepare over the coming weeks for the critical dialogue in New York, all countries must redouble their efforts to provide hope to those billions of people across the world who so urgently require support—ending what Pope Francis called ‘the plague of indifference’.
Michael D Higgins is the ninth president of Ireland.