For Maimouna Dieye, Senegal’s minister of family and solidarity, the annual gathering in New York of hundreds of world leaders and thousands of diplomats at the United Nations is all about cooperation, dialogue, and solving the world’s pressing challenges together.
“Like everyone else, I hear about the U.N.’s failures and diminishing relevance, but to me, that takes the attention away from the important work going on here,” she says.
Mrs. Dieye had just chaired a ministerial conference on women, family, and development Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, known simply as UNGA, before offering this reporter her thoughts.
Why We Wrote This
The annual United Nations General Assembly draws the usual grousing about the usefulness and focus of such a giant gathering. But a quick look behind the curtain finds cooperation, dialogue, and a commitment to “better lives for many.”
“At UNGA, we share ideas and practices that have improved people’s lives in our countries, and over time that exchange leads to better lives for many. It may not be what gets a lot of attention,” she adds, “but it’s cooperation and dialogue that have impact.”
Complaints about the U.N.’s relevance, the usefulness of a giant gathering like UNGA, and grousing about an inordinate focus on only a few leaders’ speeches – the more outlandish, the greater the attention – are common yearly observations about the world’s premier diplomatic gathering.
This year has been no different.
President Donald Trump’s extended stream-of-consciousness speech Tuesday, in which he derided multilateralism and skewered key issues on the global agenda from climate change to the plight of refugee populations, drew the spotlight away from other UNGA events.
Echoing his boss’s sentiments, Secretary of State Marco Rubio did little to nuance his disregard for UNGA when on Tuesday he outlined the U.S. role in the week’s activities on Fox News.
“It’s just a place [where] once a year, a bunch of people meet and give speeches, and write out a bunch of letters and statements, but not a lot of good, important action is happening,” he said.
