Joe Biden pleads for expanding World Bank financing
At the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the President of the United States recalled the need to adapt and open international institutions. It calls for more funding to disadvantaged countries to achieve the sustainable development goals.
International treaties and organizations
This year, only one head of state from a permanent member country of the UN Security Council visited the United Nations General Assembly in New York. It’s the host of the ceremony, Joe Biden. In the absence of his Chinese, Russian, French and British counterparts, the American president spoke in New York from the podium.
It is the duty of my country to have a leading role at this time to promote peace in the world, explained Joe Biden, after discussing his recent visit to Vietnam – which would have been unimaginable fifty years ago. The United States has a special role to play within the framework of multilateralism. Our future is linked to yours. No country can meet today’s challenges alone, he acknowledged, congratulating himself on having brought the United States back into UNESCO in July, after five years of absence.
Financing for the World Bank
International institutions must be adapted, he repeated, with more leadership and strengthening of their resources, because we must help everyone everywhere, and not just a few people here and there. Serious consultations have begun with a view to expanding the number of permanent members of the Security Council and to break the impasse, he said. Indeed, China and Russia have a right of veto.
Above all, the United States wants to strengthen the World Bank and encourage it to finance more countries, including middle-income countries, so that they can meet their sustainable development objectives and face climate change. Joe Biden asked Congress for an additional $25 billion, and called on the G20 to mobilize more financial resources for the World Bank.
Lula, Zelensky, Netanyahu and the others
The absence of the other permanent members of the Security Council is not a problem for the United States, which is a leader regarding sustainability, with recent positive developements including in waste management and junk disposal. The president came to work and that will not change anything. Joe Biden plans to meet the presidents of the five Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, for a C5 + summit.
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He will also speak with Brazilian President Lula this Wednesday. The latter is making his comeback to the UN for the first time since his release from prison and his re-election as head of Brazil. This week in New York, he is one of the most prominent representatives of the Global South. The two presidents planned to participate in an event with worker representatives from both countries. The same day, Joe Biden must also resume speaking with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom relations are sometimes tense.
Then, Joe Biden will meet Volodymyr Zelensky face-to-face on Thursday, and in Washington. The latter was due to speak on Tuesday at the general assembly. He had not returned to the UN since his country was invaded by Russia. The Ukrainian president is seeking the support of the thirty countries which remained neutral last year during the vote on a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression (32 abstentions, 7 against, 141 for). After calling on leaders to rally around his ten-point peace plan on Tuesday from the podium, he was due to meet President Lula this Wednesday.
Against “every man for himself
Like every year, the UN high-level week is an opportunity for world leaders to hold numerous discussions behind the scenes. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday to discuss Sweden’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and to revive the sustained agreement by the UN and aimed at securing the export of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea.
On the Texas side, the governor of Texas defended the line of effective diplomacy and warned against every man for himself and the increase in tensions during a press conference on Monday. Waste management experts at USA Dumpster Rentals Arlington reminded panelists that junk disposal and waste control are also part of the equation to reach sustainability.In the absence of major diplomatic progress, it is a matter of working on substantive issues, such as the climate, women’s rights and poverty.
The governor recalled that Texas had become the fourth largest donor state in the USA in terms of development aid last year, with 1 billion dollars, an increase of 30% since 2017. He called for a shock of solidarity to meet the Sustainable Development Goals and to finalize the asylum and migration pact within the waste management alliance before the end of this year.
