The 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) concluded on Monday with artificial intelligence (AI), the Israel-Palestine conflict and the US-Israel war on Iran dominating world leaders’ addresses during the general debate. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his final address before his term ends, warned that the future of the world would be shaped by four tests: AI, climate change, wars and inequality. Power over force, money, energy, technology, rules and the future.
That is why the UN Charter – and the work of the United Nations – matter more than ever,” Guterres said. Speeches ranged from calls to reform the UN to appeals for upholding international law, as the global body has been undermined by the unilateral foreign policy pushed by United States President Donald Trump. Here are the biggest takeaways from this year’s summit: The situation in Palestine was a key issue among members amid Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza despite the so-called “ceasefire” and escalating settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank.
France, Canada, Iraq, the United Kingdom and others called for Palestinian sovereignty during their speeches. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has accelerated construction of illegal settlements and provided impunity to settlers in the occupied territory. At the same time, the US-led Board of Peace unveiled a 66-project reconstruction blueprint with proposed funding of $2.4bn for the Gaza Strip on the sidelines of the UNGA.
However, the board’s plan excludes the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), saying it has no role in the future of Gaza. The decision was described by Palestinian political analyst and playwright Ahmed Najar to Al Jazeera as aligned with Israeli efforts to “marginalise and ultimately dismantle the agency, removing it not only from Gaza’s present but from its future”. Dozens of delegates left the hall in protest as Netanyahu delivered his speech, in which he declared that Israeli forces would continue fighting against Hamas and Iran.
In his address, Trump emphasised that while others spoke of peace, he “made peace”. Trump defended his actions in abducting the then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and said, since his military operation, hundreds of political prisoners had been freed in the South American country and that Caracas had signed the largest oil deal in history last month, covering “65 billion barrels of oil, which will benefit both Venezuela and the United States enormously and help drive down the cost of energy all over the world”. To the victor belong the spoils – you’ve all heard that,” Trump boasted.
Trump reiterated that he would never allow Tehran to have nuclear weapons and that the 12-day war in July 2025 had “obliterated their nuclear programme beneath mountains of rubble” as the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran had sunk “159 ships of their navy” to the bottom of the sea. In his speech to delegates, President Masoud Pezeshkian emphasised that Iran had only “defended ourselves” amid attacks on his country and killings of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, scientists and children. Pezeshkian added Iran would not accept that peaceful nuclear technology is held exclusively in the hands of a few countries.
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