UN Chief: Urgent global problems can't be fixed until Ukraine war ends

One of the biggest questions ahead of this year's annual UN General Assembly (UNGA) week of high-level meetings is how much time will be spent talking about Ukraine. The war dominated last year’s UNGA, but much of the developing world, including many of the African nations that make up the Global South, want to shift the focus to getting international development back on track--to talking about debt relief and increasing access to financing. They want to see real progress on the much-vaunted “Sustainable Development Goals” that member nations have vowed to accomplish by 2030.  What they don’t want to do is to spend the entire week talking about a distant European war.

In an exclusive interview with GZERO World, UN Secretary-General António Guterres assures Ian Bremmer that global development will be front and center at this year's summit. And yet, he also says that "the single most important thing is to have peace in Ukraine....The war in Ukraine is a complicating actor in everything else. And so, the first thing that we need is to stop that war."

It remains to be seen if the Ukraine war will suck all the oxygen out of the room, and if member nations can agree on which urgent global challenges to tackle first.

For the full interview, tune into GZERO World with Ian Bremmerat gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.