What To Expect As President Biden Visits And Addresses United Nations General Assembly
By Tiffany Williams –
At the United Nations and in New York this week, President Joe Biden will have a busy schedule. On Tuesday, Biden will meet with U.N. Secretary-General Guterres, and during their meeting they’ll talk about how the United States and the United Nations are working together to advance peace, safeguard human rights, and help countries develop.
Tuesday afternoon, President Biden will host a summit of the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats, and Biden will also give an address later Tuesday afternoon on the urgent need to combat climate change.
Wednesday, President Biden will meet with the President of Vietnam, To Lam who took office four months ago. In their meeting they’re expected to talk about shared interest between the United States and Vietnam in stability and prosperity in Southeast Asia. Wednesday afternoon President Biden will attend a meeting with other world leaders focused on Ukraine reconstruction.
On Wednesday night, President Biden will head to the Met, and there he will host world leaders and senior U.N. officials for a reception.
This week’s trip to the U.N. General Assembly, will be the last of the Biden presidency, and joining the President this week, a senior administration official said will be joined by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, other Cabinet officials, and even members of Congress.
The senior administration official said, “The President will do what he has done throughout his presidency: rally global action to tackle some of our world’s biggest challenges.” They also said, “We’ll be talking about the need to strengthen our systems for providing humanitarian assistance; to end brutal wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan; and we’ll also be talking about the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence.”
The theme of this year’s General Assembly, the senior administration official said, “Will be the need to reform and strengthen our global institutions, including the U.N., to make them more effective and inclusive.”
“We’re going into a General Assembly this year with the world facing many steep challenges, problems so big no one country can solve them on their own,” said the senior administration official. “That’s why the President feels so strongly the world needs strong and effective global institutions, including an adapted United Nations.”
There will be other high-level meetings this week at the United Nations General Assembly. The senior administration official says those meetings will be on the future of multilateral cooperation, sea level rise, antimicrobial resistance, emerging technology and specific meetings on global crises such as the difficult situation in Haiti, Sudan, Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria, and the Rohingya refugee crisis. Many of these meetings not attended by President Biden but will be attended by senior U.S. representatives.
