THE 79th United Nations General Assembly (Unga 79) curtain comes down today in New York in the United States where global leaders gathered to chart the way forward for several challenges facing the world.
This year’s Unga came at a critical moment when the world is confronted by a myriad of challenges.
There are now more wars today compared to the last decade and the impact of climate change is wreaking havoc across the world, while global economies have wobbled under pressure from these factors and also from the huge dent caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As Unga 79 curtain comes down, here are a few reminders. Nearly 80 million people are living in conditions of internal displacement due to several reasons among them wars and the impact of climate change. This is more than five times compared to the last decade.
About 50 million people have been forced to leave their countries to become refugees and that means roughly 130 million have been forced to flee their homes due to several factors. In many cases, anyone forced to flee their home becomes a charity caseload, meaning resources must be secured to feed them and to meet their basic requirements.
In other words, this world has allowed such a huge number of productive people to become charity caseloads because the same world can neither stop the wars nor address some of the drivers of population movement and human suffering.
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The impact of these drivers of deprivation is not limited to large-scale displacement. Statistics show that the number of people who need assistance has risen over the past decade. That means the budget required to keep them alive has spiked beyond the world’s coping capacity. The world is at a crossroads.
Efforts to seek solutions to address the drivers of destitution have tended to be caught in debates and discussions. On the climate change front, the debate is on how and who should cut carbon emissions and to what extent, while those countries that emit less continue to endure the worst of climate change. Western countries currently do not see the urgent need to cut down carbon emissions because much of the impact is felt elsewhere.
On the conflict front, efforts towards peace resolutions have been impeded by global politics of patronage instead of condemning the wars and their impact on people. The narratives and analyses are caught up on who is bombing who and who is in whose camp. That is why we have Ukraine, Gaza and now Lebanon. With each war, more people are forced to flee to safety, but it also means that their productive capacities are taken away from them, surrendering their survival to charity.
As more people flee their homes and those who remain become incapacitated to eke out a living on their own, it simply means the world must take responsibility for the bill to keep people alive as they search for the elusive peace and solutions to some of the major drivers of suffering. That capacity is overstretched today.
In a world where solutions to most problems are linked to money, it is becoming increasingly insurmountable to address human suffering. That calls for a major rethink to restabilise the world and get people back to their productive areas and capacities. The world is no longer able to take care of everyone affected by wars, climate change and other challenges.
Looking at the current state of the world, solutions are urgently needed. However, efforts towards that are impeded by political and economic arrogance even though at this stage most countries are enduring some of the most severe impacts of wars or climate change.
The debate on climate change is tied to the control of carbon emissions, its impact on economies and political power as well as the ability of the world to embrace alternative sources of energy.
Technology has offered many solutions to the carbon question, but then, political power is slowing down progress. For these reasons, the world is now suffering various impacts of climatic shocks. By the time global leadership lifts its head, the world will have been inundated with flood waters and flames of fire.
On the conflict front, political scientists and international relations experts have suggested that preventing wars requires arms control and diplomacy. This is an old and tired approach that has not yielded effective results for many decades. This is because arms are not the cause of wars and conflicts but social and political differences. Guns and weapons are only used as instruments to express social and political differences.
New conflict resolution ideas are needed to stabilise the world and to bring every citizen to their productive capacities where their vision for the future is not impeded by the fear of wars and conflicts. Perhaps, it is a moment the world needs to acknowledge that a universalised method of governance is not suitable for every society and accept that societies differ and that each must be allowed to use what suits it as long as the rights and freedoms of the people are not infringed upon.
Tapiwa Gomo is a development consultant based in Pretoria, South Africa. He writes here in his personal capacity.