World leaders meet at UN as planet grapples with war

Under a global cloud of wars and bitter divisions, world leaders meet at the United Nations this week facing new fears that runaway artificial intelligence could threaten humanity even as climate shocks and escalating prices are already making life much tougher for hundreds of millions of people.

The annual high-level gathering at the UN General Assembly will also be consumed with major wars in Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo and Myanmar and a persisting question: Can the leaders do anything to end them?

And what can they do about the relentless rise of global warming threatening the future of the planet, the growing inequalities within and among nations, and shocks to the global economy as blocked shipping routes and supply chains increase the cost of living and slow growth?

The future of the United Nations will also definitely be on the agenda. At 81, its powers are still the victorious nations from World War II, not the 21st century’s major global players. The UN’s 193 member nations have agreed to a wide-ranging reform package that includes updating key institutions such as the powerful UN Security Council, where the US, Russia, China, Britain and France hold inordinate sway because of their veto power. Reform, however, is easier said than implemented.

Behind the scenes, there will be speculation about who will lead the United Nations next. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ second five-year term ends December 31 and no clear successor has emerged.

There is still no question that the UN remains THE gathering place for its 193 member nations and their leaders. Some 130 heads of state and government are expected to speak at the General Assembly starting Tuesday along with dozens of ministers. Among the headliners will be US President Donald Trump and French President Emanuel Macron. Both will speak Tuesday after Guterres’ opening “state of the world” address.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian speak Wednesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — whom New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani wanted arrested for his treatment of Palestinians in Gaza until he learned he has no such authority — will address the assembly on Thursday. For a second year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas won’t be coming to the UN because the US has refused to give him a visa. He will nonetheless address the assembly by video the same day.  The United States, under its agreement with the UN to host the organization, is required to allow diplomats from all member nations to attend meetings.

Equally telling is who else isn’t coming. China’s President Xi Jinping is meeting Trump in Washington on Wednesday, yet he is skipping — some diplomats say snubbing — the UN gathering and sending a vice president instead. Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t coming either, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has backed out. France’s UN ambassador, Jerome Bonnafont, said it is “extremely critical” for world leaders this week to support the UN as the place where the world’s nations meet — especially at a time of such polarisation.

“We believe in multilateralism,” he said, “and we believe that the high-level week is the occasion for countries in the world to reaffirm that they prefer cooperation and dialogue to confrontation.”

There is no doubt it’s been a tough year for the world body. It has been pushed to the sidelines when it comes to its key responsibility of ensuring international peace and security and trying to end major conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. The US failure to pay billions of dollars in outstanding arrears has left the organisation’s finances in rocky shape.

But veteran UN watcher Richard Gowan, the International Crisis Group’s global issues and institutions program director, says 2025 was even worse.

A year ago, he said, people were contemplating that Trump would use his UN speech to announce that the United States would leave the world organisation. Trump didn’t announce a pullout last September and the UN muddled through the past 12 months with financial troubles that forced cutbacks to its peacekeeping operations and humanitarian aid.

In recent days, the US paid $725 million of its dues to the UN’s regular operating budget for this year, enough to keep the Trump administration from losing its vote in the General Assembly. The payment was a strong indication that Trump will keep the US in the United Nations.

The UN is no longer “in freefall,” Gowan said, but it “is stuck in an open-ended or permanent crisis.”

Put more graphically, he said, “The UN may not be in emergency care like it was last year, but it does seem to be trapped in a trauma center for the foreseeable future.”

Former UN deputy secretary-general Mark Malloch-Brown, a United Nations Foundation board member, said, “While the world still trusts the UN, the global public is eager for change.”

The future of artificial intelligence has pushed to the forefront of global concerns, with its speeding advances and the dawning recognition that there are no industry controls, let alone any global guardrails for a technology that has many advantages but also many disadvantages and unknowns.

Days before the global gathering, leaders of three major AI companies warned about the technology getting out of human control and called for a pause, but Trump dismissed their concerns as “a hoax,” and urged continued advances to keep the US ahead of China.

The UN Security Council added a high-level meeting on AI to its agenda on Wednesday afternoon, a sign of growing apprehension and need to address issue.

It was already slated to hold a high-level meeting on Ukraine with Zelenskyy on Wednesday morning.

For the UN chief, this will be his last assembly meeting with global leaders. He previewed his speech last week, telling UN reporters that power is shifting in “an era of deep uncertainty.”

“At a time when the world faces three existential threats,” he said, “international cooperation is more necessary than ever.”

Others will be vying for the spotlight on issues from rising sea levels and funding education to the fight for gender equality. Hundreds of private meetings will also convene in UN cubicles, hotels, diplomatic missions and restaurants.

Esther Brimmer, a senior fellow in global governance at the Council on Foreign Relations and former US assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs in the Obama administration, said in-person meetings can help countries hash out ideas that get implemented months later.

She called the situation in 2026 “much more serious and complex than in decades past.”

“With that said, I’m also not without hope as well,” Brimmer said. “Over the past decades we’ve learned a lot about international cooperation.”