Live updates from the UN General Assembly summit of world leaders

After 38 speeches, Day 3 has come to an end.

Thanks for joining us here this week for live updates from and around the U.N. General Assembly. While this blog has come to an end, you can follow our coverage for the remaining days at https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations-general-assembly.

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China told assembled world leaders Thursday that it considers itself part of the Global South, saying it identified with the goals and challenges of less-developed nations and offering them an alternative to what it has long called “Western hegemony.” The message came from a lower official after the country’s powerful president, Xi Jinping, skipped the annual U.N. meeting.

Xi sent Vice President Han Zheng to deliver a policy statement at the General Assembly’s leader’s meeting Wednesday that covered the government’s usual positions with familiar language but appeared to focus on building coalitions around its approach to development and international relations.

“As the largest developing countries, China is a natural member of the Global South. It breathes the same breath with other developing countries and shares the same future with them,” Han said. He also said China supports those nations’ development path “in keeping with their national conditions.”

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Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe told the UN General Assembly with current geopolitical tensions, new theater of conflicts and emergence of new global power centers, neutral non-aligned countries such as his are caught in between.

“Neutral non-aligned countries of the global such as Sri Lanka are once again constrained between global power configurations, facing those who do not respect the sovereignty of our nations,” he said.

Conflicts among big powers are complicating the policy environment for the rest by adding uncertainty in economic and stability disrupting supply chain, causing inflation, hampering food and energy security, he said.

As Sri Lanka begins to recover from its worst economic crisis, adverse climatic outcomes are denting it, he said adding that as a climate-vulnerable, debt-ridden nation, the need for climate finance is urgent.

Despite promises, developed countries are falling short on their commitments, he said.

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Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said his country could “not turn its back” on traditional friends like Russia despite plans by his government to further strengthen ties with Western nations and seek European Union membership.

Serbia has refused to join international sanctions against Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine.

“I stand before you as the representative of a free and independent country, the Republic of Serbia, which is on its new accession path, but which at the same time is not ready to turn its back on traditional friendships it has been building for centuries,” Vucic said.

The Serbian leader travelled to New York days after E.U.-brokered talks with Kosovo again broke down — potentially setting back accession bids by both countries to join the bloc. International pressure on the parties, Vucic insisted, had been too one-sided.

“This balance by which Serbia has to make concessions all the time, is not leading towards a solution. Quite the contrary.”

Serbia and its former province of Kosovo have been at odds for decades. Their 1998-99 war left more than 10,000 people dead, mostly Kosovo Albanians. Kosovo declared independence in 2008 but Belgrade has refused to recognize it. Kosovo is not a U.N. member-state.

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Speaking for the European Union, Michel expressed the body’s support for reform of global decision-making through the United Nations and the need to be more internationally inclusive. He referenced Russia’s status as a permanent member of the Security Council (which gives the country a veto), and its war in Ukraine.

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says “those who think that peace can prevail in the Middle East without the Palestinian people enjoying their full and legitimate national rights are mistaken.”

It was the closest he came in a nearly 25-minute address to acknowledging U.S.-led negotiations aimed at getting Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel.

The Saudis have said such a deal must include major progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state, something Israel’s far-right government has all but ruled out.

The 87-year-old Palestinian leader’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly largely resembled those he has delivered in past sessions. He accused Israel of a litany of violations against Palestinian rights and called for an international conference to revive the peace process.

He said the Israeli occupation of lands the Palestinians want for a future state “challenges more than a thousand resolutions, violates the principles of international law and international legitimacy, while racing to change the historical, geographical and demographic reality on the ground.”

The Israeli delegation walked out of the hall early in his address, when he spoke about Israel’s practice of holding the remains of alleged Palestinian attackers

There have been no serious or substantive peace talks in over a decade, and Abbas is deeply unpopular among Palestinians, many of whom view his Palestinian Authority as a corrupt pillar of the status quo.

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Kenyan President William Ruto reechoed the concerns of global leaders about the present structure of the Security Council, whose members he accused of “rampant impunity” and “incapable of delivering meaningful progress” in the face of global challenges.

And to Haiti, he added, the world must come to the aid of the Caribbean nation paying the price “for their hunger for liberty and the sorrow they have endured for their thirst for freedom.”

“Haiti is the ultimate test for international solidarity and collective action,” he said. Kenya has offered to lead an international police force to combat gang violence in Haiti, which has been met with skepticism by Haitians and Kenyans alike.

While he spoke glowingly about justice and prosperity for all, Ruto himself had faced alleged crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court over a post-election violence. The ICC stopped the case in 2016 over “political meddling” but also noted it “could be prosecuted afresh in future.”

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On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterated that Canada wasn’t looking to provoke India in the diplomatic row that’s erupted over the killing of a Sikh leader.

“We are not looking to provoke or cause problems but we are unequivocal around the importance of the rule of law and unequivocal about the importance of protecting Canadians and standing up for our values,” Trudeau said in New York.

For the latest, including India’s suspension of visa services for Canadians, read more from AP’s Ashok Sharma and Krutika Pathi.

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As President Salva Kiir of South Sudan strolled into the Assembly hall, his signature cap on, he took quite his time acknowledging the audience and wearing his glasses.

At 72 and in power since the territory became independent of Sudan in 2011, Kiir is under pressure to conduct a credible presidential election in 2024, the country’s first since independence from Sudan. He has said he will run in the election despite criticism at home that he is not strong enough to remain in office.

Kiir used his speech to appeal to the U.N. to lift its embargo on South Sudan to aid the implementation of peace and to help authorities secure the elections.

“What remains now is to fast-track the implementation of the remaining provisions in the agreement in order to conclude the transitional period peacefully through fair, transparent and credible elections in 2024,” he said.

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Shortly after he mounted the podium, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa presented himself as a champion of democracy, citing the recent election that earned him another five years in office.

“Zimbabwe continues to entrench democracy, constitutionalism, good governance and rule of law,” said the 80-year-old Mnangagwa, who has the nickname “the crocodile” from his days as a guerrilla fighter. He described the election as “free, fair, transparent and credible” but not many would agree.

Independent observers have said the election was flawed with the opposition targeted. The AP also found signs that the country may have slipped into a new era of brutal oppression with critics and opposition supporters beaten and tortured.

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Coming from a country which has faced deadly intercommunal fighting for more than a decade, Central African Republic’s President Faustin Archange Touadera told the Assembly the arms embargo that the Security Council imposed on the country since its 2013 civil war violates the global solidarity that the U.N. stands for.

“The CAR criticizes here before the world the cynical decision which betrays the unspoken intention of the members of the council that voted for it to instrumentalize the sanctions regime for political purposes and to bring political pressure to bar under the aegis of the UN,” Touadera said.

While it lifted the embargo for the country’s security forces in July, the Security Council kept the restriction on mercenaries and all other armed groups. In CAR, several hundred members of the Russian mercenary group, Wagner, have been helping fight the crisis there.

“We repudiate this denial of our rights to self-determination and .. the sovereignty of our wealth and natural resources, rights guaranteed by the relevant legal instruments of the United Nations,” Touadera said.

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— All eyes were on the Security Council’s meeting on Ukraine for possible fireworks when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov crossed paths. But then they didn’t, AP’s Jennifer Peltz reported.

— At the Climate Ambition Summit, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry wasn’t permitted to speak. But at least one American was: California Gov. Gavin Newsom, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein reported.

— On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, U.S. President Joe Biden held highly anticipated bilateral meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

— With two days of speeches under the General Debate’s belt, is any one specific storyline emerging? So asks AP’s Ted Anthony.

We’re back with more from the U.N. General Assembly Hall and the sidelines of the summit.

Key speeches expected today: Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s internationally recognized government; Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe; Kenyan President William Ruto; China’s vice president Han Zheng; Abdel-Fattah Burhan, Sudan’s military leader and chair of its ruling Sovereign Council.

After 40 speeches across a dozen hours, Day 2 of the General Debate is over.

We’ll be back here tomorrow morning with fresh coverage from the U.N. General Assembly.

If you want a preview of what to expect, check out our daily briefing.

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Libya’s representative says the storms and flooding that hit his country last week have “fully surpassed all local capacity” to respond and help.

Fathallah al-Zani, Libya’s youth minister and temporary foreign minister, told the General Assembly that the country was “weighed down with sadness.” The floods have killed thousands in Libya’s northeast in the past 10 days, and survivors have been plagued by water contamination and the lack of sanitation.

“I call on the world to live up to its responsibility to Libya in order to help cope with the aftermath of the disaster,” the minister said.

He also said Libyans have set aside political differences in a “spirit of unity and solidarity” in response to the problems.

“This is the lesson that we need to pass on to our children,” he said.

Each year, certain voices dominate at the General Assembly. Here, we spotlight each night some thoughts from leaders who might have not captured the majority of headlines and airtime.

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It’s Fathallah al-Zani, the youth minister in the government based in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, who was appointed foreign minister on a temporary basis last month.

That came after Libya’s top diplomat was suspended and fled the country when Israel revealed that its foreign minister had met with her.

For nearly a decade, Libya has been split between the Tripoli government, in the west, and an eastern government backed by a powerful military commander, Gen. Khalifa Hifter. Each is backed by international patrons and powerful local militias.

Both sides have pledged to aid relief efforts in the wake of devastating floods in Derna, which is in the east. But they have never been able to cooperate with one another and were in a state of all-out war as recently as 2020, when Hifter’s forces laid siege to the capital.

Hifter’s forces are backed by Egypt, Russia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, while the western Libya administration is backed by Turkey, Qatar and Italy. Years of international pressure have failed to get the two parliaments to unify, and elections planned for 2021 were never held.

Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader says he had been forced to close air, sea and land traffic this year because people in Haiti were planning to take water without the right to do so.

Abinader detailed the dispute over construction of a canal diverting water from a river that runs through both countries. The canal plans to take water from near the Massacre River, named after an 18th century clash between Spanish and French colonizers.

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The Dominican Republic says the canal would hurt Dominican farmers and the environment by reducing the river’s flow. Haiti’s government insists that building the canal falls within its sovereign right to decide how to use its natural resources.

Abinader said that unspecified bad actors in Haiti wanted to profit off of agriculture grown with the water, and that the weak Haitian state could do nothing about it.

The Dominican Republic shut all land, air and sea borders with Haiti in September as armed Dominican soldiers patrolled entry points and military planes roared overhead.

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“The Dominican government has been forced to take forceful measures such as closing the border with Haiti in order to guarantee security and our national interest, as well as to protect our rivers, environment and agricultural production,” Abinader said. “We do not have, nor do we seek or desire, a confrontation with the Haitian people but we face uncontrollable actors.”

He echoed calls for an international force in Haiti authorized by the U.N. Security Council, and praised the willingness expressed by countries such as Kenya to contribute.

“The problem of Haiti is no longer just in Haiti,” Abidaner said. “It is in the hands of the international community.”

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The president of Moldova issued an international appeal to assist her country’s bid to join the European Union and strengthen democratic institutions against what she described as a persistent Russian effort to destabilize her country.

“Russia has teamed up with corrupt groups to destabilize us. Their hybrid toolbox includes energy blackmail, support for separatism, cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns,” Maia Sandu said. Wedged between Romania and Ukraine, Moldova applied for EU membership a month after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

“The enlargement of the EU is the sole path to ensure our neighborhood stays anchored in the free world … I extend this goal beyond the EU borders, to all the countries of the free world,” Sandu said. “When one (democracy) thrives, it inspires hope in others. When one falters, it risks a domino effect. Today, the fight for democracy anywhere is the fight for democracy everywhere.”

AP’s McKinnon de Kuyper can help you out. For more, check out this guide from AP’s Jennifer Peltz.

Here’s what it is: We’re not happy about your dealings with North Korea.

President Yoon Suk Yeol sounded a warning to fellow world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly today about the recent communication and intended cooperation between North Korea and Russia. He says any action by a permanent U.N. Security Council member to circumvent international norms would be dangerous and “paradoxical.”

“It is paradoxical that a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, entrusted as the ultimate guardian of world peace, would wage war by invading another sovereign nation and receive arms and ammunition from a regime that blatantly violates Security Council resolutions,” Yoon told fellow leaders. He was talking about Ukraine, which is fighting a war against the 2022 Russian invasion of its territory.

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Yoon said that if North Korea “acquires the information and technology necessary” to enhance its weapons of mass destruction in exchange for giving conventional weapons to Russia, that would also be unacceptable to South Korea.

“Such a deal between Russia and the DPRK will be a direct provocation threatening the peace and security of not only Ukraine but also the Republic of Korea. The Republic of Korea, together with its allies and partners, will not stand idly by,” Yoon said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said “this is a golden moment for us” as he met with U.S. President Joe Biden to work on a partnership around worker’s rights.

“We are arousing hope for millions and millions of Brazilians and Americans,” Lula said.

The two leaders met on the sidelines of the General Assembly, where they were the first two world leaders to speak yesterday. Biden was enthusiastic about Lula’s comments, saying “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

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Today’s “morning session” ended a full hour before yesterday’s did, despite cycling through 20 speakers.

While Tuesday saw few speeches that adhered to the strongly recommended 15-minute time limit (remember: the average speech last year was about 19 minutes), the first half of today had quite a few under that mark.

There was a recess before the “afternoon session” was due to start. Still to come today: Monaco’s Prince Albert II, Chile’s Gabriel Boric, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, among others.

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“Humanity has opened the gates of hell,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said at the opening of the Climate Ambition Summit.

Guterres convened the summit with the idea that only world leaders who came with new concrete actions would get to address their peers on the issue, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein reports. But many leaders of the countries that produce the most heat-trapping gases themselves chose not to even ask.

The United States, which has put the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the decades, did send climate envoy John Kerry — then the United Nations didn’t give Kerry a speaking spot. But there was at least one American on the docket: California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The 32 world leaders who did qualify represented only 11% of the world’s carbon dioxide pollution.

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The leaders of Greece and Turkey agreed Wednesday to continue high-level meetings over the next three months, aimed at deescalating tension that has troubled the two NATO members for years.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey on the sidelines to discuss a so-called positive agenda, designed to take attention off long-standing disputes.

“We agreed to continue working to deepen the positive climate in Greek-Turkish relations that has been established in recent months,” Mitsotakis said, speaking to Greek reporters in New York after the hourlong meeting.

The two neighbors are at odds over sea boundaries and drilling rights in the eastern Mediterranean — a dispute centered around boundary lines around numerous Greek islands, mostly in the Aegean Sea.

Greek government officials said top diplomats from the two countries would meet again over the next two months and that a joint cabinet meeting would be held in December in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki.

Nearly two hours into the U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov slipped into the chamber as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was speaking.

Before the meeting started, all eyes were on whether there would be fireworks between Lavrov and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who also attended the meeting. But the two never did cross paths: Zelenskyy left shortly after he spoke toward the start of the meeting.

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U.S. President Joe Biden expressed surprise during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he wasn’t peppered with questions by reporters about the country’s auto strike.

Biden was purposefully wearing a red tie at the sit-down on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly to show his solidarity with the striking UAW workers, according to the White House. There are roughly 13,000 workers striking at three different factories run by General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, the owner of Chrysler. The UAW has threatened to expand the strike unless progress is achieved by Friday.

After opening statements at the Netanyahu meeting, journalists shouted questions about Israel. (Biden has previously expressed misgivings about Netanyahu’s plans to restructure the Israeli court system and the possible erosion of checks and balances.)

The U.S. president turned to Netanyahu and said: “Surprised they haven’t asked me about the auto strike. They usually ask about things that have nothing to do with what we’re talking about.”

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There are some notable no-shows at the U.N. General Assembly this week, with the head of just one of the U.N. Security Council’s permanent members present.

For the first time since 2010, leaders of four of the council’s five permanent members, known as the P5, were not speaking at the General Debate, according to a review of leaders’ speeches in recent years.

Absent this year are China’s Xi Jinping, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the U.K.’s Rishi Sunak. Xi has only spoken at the General Debate three times in the past decade, and Putin twice. Macron said he couldn’t attend ahead of King Charles III’s visit and Sunak pled a busy schedule.

That left only U.S. President Joe Biden, who during his speech on Tuesday said the number of Security Council permanent members should be increased. His remarks echoed his initial call from last year, when he specifically said permanent seats should be granted to nations in Africa and Latin America.

“We need to be able to break the gridlock that too often stymies progress and blocks consensus on the council,” he said Tuesday. “We need more voices and more perspectives at the table.”

It’s rare, though, that those top leaders actually attend Security Council meetings in person. Biden sat out Wednesday’s session on Ukraine, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken representing the U.S.

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The Security Council meeting got underway after a roughly 10-minute delay sparked by Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzya taking issue with how Albania was chairing the meeting, including letting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speak before Security Council members.

“I must say that coming from you, all this lecture of violating the rules in this building is quite an impressive shoot,” Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama retorted after several back-and-forths. “But as far as you repeated, many times, that the violation here is about President Zelenskyy speaking before the Council members: There is a solution for this. If you agree, you stop the war and President Zelesnkyy will not take the floor.”

All eyes will be on Ukraine’s president and Russia’s top diplomat: Will they clash? Will they speak? Will they avoid each other entirely? Will they come?

There’s no sign of either yet, but read more on what to expect from this meeting, by AP’s Edith M. Lederer and Jennifer Peltz.

U.S. President Joe Biden held a long-awaited meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, but the setting was much different than when the two countries’ leaders usually sit down together.

Instead of welcoming Netanyahu to the Oval Office, Biden met with him at a hotel in New York, where both were in town for the General Assembly.

The location is a reflection of Biden’s discomfort with Netanyahu’s attempt to weaken the independence of Israel’s judicial system.

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Anti-Netanyahu protesters gathered near the hotel, waving Israeli flags and denouncing his policies as a threat to democracy. Hundreds more demonstrated outside the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.

Biden made a glancing reference to the controversy, saying he plans to discuss some of the “hardest issues,” including “upholding democratic values that lie at the heart of our partnership, including checks and balances in our systems.”

He also left open the possibility of another, more prestigious meeting, saying “I hope we’ll see each other in Washington by the end of the year.”

Netanyahu said “one thing will never change is Israel’s commitment to democracy.”

He also thanked Biden for his work to normalize diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, describing it as “something within our reach.”

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The president of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, has vowed to never accept the island’s division as a basis for an internationally backed solution, as the ethnic divide in Cyprus approaches the half-century mark.

The Mediterranean island has been split — with Greek Cypriots in the south and Turkish Cypriots in the breakaway North — since a Turkish invasion in 1974 in the wake of a failed coup by supporters for a union with Greece. Christodoulides heads the internationally recognized government in the south.

He addressed remarks made a day earlier by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who described U.N. resolutions as outdated and called for a deal based on the existence of two sovereign states.

“I want to take this opportunity to also send a personal message to President Erdoğan,” Christodoulides said. “There is not and never will be any basis for a settlement of the Cyprus question other than (the one) dictated by the U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

TEHRAN, Iran — Russia’s defense minister has attended an exhibition of Iranian-made military drones and missiles after Iran’s president denied supplying weapons for Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu arrived in Tehran on Tuesday and met with top officials to discuss the longstanding military and defense cooperation between the two countries.

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The official IRNA news agency ran an image of Shoigu viewing the various weapons in an outdoor space. The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, ran video footage.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi on Monday denied his country had sent drones to Russia in a meeting with media executives on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. Russian attack drones and missiles have wreaked havoc on Ukrainian cities, often killing civilians.

Iran has acknowledged sending drones to Russia before its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. and European officials say the sheer number of Iranian drones being used in the war shows that the flow of such weapons has not only continued but intensified after hostilities began. The White House has even said that Iran is helping Russia to build its own drone manufacturing plant east of Moscow.

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He is only 65 but has been president of Rwanda for ⅓ of his life.

Paul Kagame has been in power since 2000, making him one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders and the de facto leader of the East African nation since its 1994 genocide.

If he contests next year’s election — as he said this week — and wins, he could remain a familiar face on the rostrum for at least another five years.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met late Tuesday in New York, Erdogan’s office said.

It is the first time the two have met in person and comes as Turkey and Israel gradually improve ties after years of tension over Palestine.
The leaders discussed political, economic and regional issues, as well as the Israel-Palestine issue, according to a Turkish government statement.

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Erdogan told Netanyahu that the two countries could cooperate on energy, technology, innovation, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, the statement added.
Relations between the former allies soured in 2010 when Israeli commandos killed 10 Turks in a raid on a ship attempting to breach its blockade on the Gaza Strip.

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Later efforts to patch up relations stumbled over the killing of dozens of Palestinian protesters at the Gaza border in 2018.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Ankara last year as Turkey embarked on a diplomatic push to revive relations with regional powers including Israel, the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

— Motorcades and barricades choked midtown Manhattan as the world’s top dignitaries convened for the first day of the U.N. General Assembly’s annual meeting, which kicked off with a stern speech from U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

— The first day saw speeches from high-profile leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

— While speeches have likely been in the works for a while, the addresses Tuesday still referenced very recent events — from last week’s floods in Libya to renewed hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Speech count: 37, including opening speeches from the secretary-general and General Assembly president

We’re back with more from the U.N. General Assembly Hall and the sidelines of the summit.

First up for Day 2 of the General Debate is Seychelles, which AP’s Chinedu Asadu notes is Africa’s smallest nation — one whose land area is only slightly more than half of New York City.

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After 37 speeches across nearly 13 hours, Day 1 of the General Debate is over.

We’ll be back here tomorrow morning with fresh coverage from the U.N. General Assembly.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem didn’t mince words about the world leaders who spoke at the annual high-level meeting of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday — 14 men spoke before a woman stepped to the podium.

“It tells me that we are still living mostly in a patriarchy,” she said at a reception in New York for the 50th anniversary of Ms. Magazine, which she co-founded.

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Steinem said it also says that “the United Nations will not be united until there is gender equality,” and many more leaders that speak are women.

Founded on the ashes of World War II, every secretary-general for the last 78 years has been a man.

Secretary-General António Guterres’ second term ends in 2026. There are no candidates yet but Steinem said, “I’m going to campaign for a woman.”

Each year, certain voices dominate at the General Assembly. Here, we spotlight each night some thoughts from leaders who might have not captured the majority of headlines and airtime.

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Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who is attending his first U.N. General Assembly as president, is speaking just as the country’s main opposition parties challenged his election and asked the Nigerian Supreme Court to sack him as president.

The 71-year-old Nigerian leader is attending this year’s session confronted with various challenges at home, from the resurgence of coups in West Africa — whose regional bloc he leads — to Nigeria’s growing economic hardship.

“If this year’s theme is to mean anything, it must mean something special and particular to Africa,” said Tinubu. (For more on that theme, check out our backgrounder.)

Check out our daily briefing, with highlights from today and a preview of what tomorrow brings.

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Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune used his UNGA speech to demand a return to democracy in Niger, which is one of two African countries to have experienced a military takeover in the last two months. For those keeping count, that’s eight successful coups on the continent since 2020.

Any attempt to return democracy in Niger must be done through political means, Tebboune said, warning of “dangerous repercussions on peace and stability” in the region if the threat of force — long considered by West Africa’s regional bloc of ECOWAS as an option to reverse the coup in Niger — is carried out.

“We call for vigilance given the intentions of foreign military intervention,” the Algerian leader added.

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Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said his country will not withdraw from its “obvious right for peaceful use of nuclear” technology and urged the United States to return to the 2015 nuclear deal.

He reiterated that a nuclear arsenal has “no room” in Iran’s military doctrine.

Raisi also urged the U.S. to return to nuclear deal by showing good will through “trust-building policy.”

In 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the deal and imposed more sanctions.

The remarks came a day after Iran and the U.S. freed prisoners of both sides who were in jails for years. The U.S. also allowed Iran to have access to nearly $6 billion in frozen assets. The Americans arrived home today.

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Some nations post their speeches only in Arabic, others only in French, others just in English. Some have a couple languages.

Then there’s Uzbekistan, which apparently wants to make absolutely certain people hear what President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has to say.

While he delivered it in Uzbek, his speech was posted on the U.N. website in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish just minutes after he concluded. Speakers of those languages cover more than half the world’s population, were they so inclined to read the speech. Those transcripts come from the countries, not the U.N.

That’s what’s called managing your constituency.

Believe it or not, just after 3:45 p.m. marked the conclusion of the “morning session” of the first day of the General Debate. Starting a little after 9 a.m., the session saw 19 speeches.

With sunset expected in about three hours, the afternoon session has now commenced. Eighteen countries are on the docket.

While leaders are routinely cautioned not to adhere to the 15-minute time limit, few take heed.

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It took more than 5½ hours Tuesday before a female leader took the podium at the 78th U.N. General Assembly’s General Debate. That spot went to Her Excellency Katalin Novák, the president of Hungary (where the power lies, really, with the head of government, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán).

She spoke of supporting Ukraine, of the importance of strengthening families, of parental freedom. And after Novák concluded her speech, a tiny telling moment: “And now I ask for protocol to accompany His Excellency,” the translator — a woman — said in English.

She quickly corrected herself: “HER Excellency.”

Two speeches later came Nataša Pirc Musar, president of Slovenia. There’s only one other woman scheduled to speak Tuesday: Peru’s Dina Boluarte.

This came a day after the U.N. secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, highlighted a U.N. report that said it will take 286 years for men and women to reach equality under the current rate of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals.

That takes us to 2309.

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That would be Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador. AP’s chief U.N. correspondent, Edith M. Lederer, ran into him shortly after Zelenskyy finished speaking and asked him for comment.

“Did he speak?” Polyansky told her. “I didn’t notice he was speaking. I was on my phone.”

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The last time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in-person at the U.N. General Assembly, he was a relatively new world leader known for being a former actor and comedian. That was 2021, when he lamented that “the U.N. is like a retired superhero who’s long forgotten how great they once were.”

Two years later, Zelenskyy is widely known, shepherding Ukraine through Russia’s ongoing invasion. In speeches at the U.N. today, Zelenskyy and allies cast Ukraine’s cause as a battle for the rule of international law, AP’s Jennifer Peltz and Derek Gatopoulos report.