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UN General Assembly: UNGA 78
Dr. Comfort Ero of the International Crisis Group has spent her career tackling the most difficult conflicts in the world, often exacerbated by severe environmental or social disasters. But as the climate crisis and war in Ukraine compound the forces pushing many fragile societies to the brink, she says multilateral institutions like the United Nations are not prepared to meet the challenge.
Faced with state collapse, food insecurity, and lack of governance, countries like Libya, Lebanon and Sri Lanka are not able to access the help they need to stabilize, build resilience and thrive.
“Countries are already facing difficult trend lines with a multilateral system that is shaky, that is fragile, that is already stretched to its capacity, not able to deal.” she said during a Global Stage livestream event at UN headquarters in New York on September 22, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
The discussion was moderated by Nicholas Thompson of The Atlantic and was held by GZERO Media in collaboration with the United Nations, the Complex Risk Analytics Fund, and the Early Warnings for All initiative.
Watch the full Global Stage conversation: Can data and AI save lives and make the world safer?
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Staving off "the dark side" of artificial intelligence: UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed
Artificial Intelligence promises revolutionary advances in the way we work, live and govern ourselves, but is it all a rosy picture?
United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed says that while the potential benefits are enormous, “so is the dark side.” Without thoughtful leadership, the world could lose a precious opportunity to close major social divides. She spoke during a Global Stage livestream event at UN headquarters in New York on September 22, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The discussion was moderated by Nicholas Thompson of The Atlantic and was held by GZERO Media in collaboration with the United Nations, the Complex Risk Analytics Fund, and the Early Warnings for All initiative.
She says it will take a “transformative mindset” and an eagerness to tackle more and bigger problems to pull off the transition, and emphasizes the severe mismatch of capable leadership with positions of power.
"Where there is leadership, there's not much power. And where there is power, that leadership is struggling,” she said.
Watch the full Global Stage conversation: Can data and AI save lives and make the world safer?
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Doreen Bogdan-Marin spends a lot of time thinking about how to keep the world connected as the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union. The biggest frontier in that realm is expanding internet access to those in the developing world who struggle to get online.
To that end, she organized Partner2Connect, which hopes to raise $100 billion by 2026 to “connect every last person” on the planet to the internet. Doing so could help progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are woefully behind schedule.
She and GZERO’s Tony Maciulis discussed the potential benefits of worldwide connectivity, as well as AI’s potential to help close the gap.
More at the UN General Assembly: Global Stage.
Climate crisis can't be hijacked by global competitions: Justin Vaisse
The war in Ukraine has so fundamentally redirected the course of world affairs that UN Secretary-General António Guterres says little else can be resolved globally before the fighting stops.
That doesn’t stop self-described “eternal optimist” Justin Vaisse from giving it his best shot. The historian took on a mandate from French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017 to organize the Paris Peace Forum, a venue to mend the strained and broken aspects of the multilateral system.
GZERO’s Tony Maciulis caught up with him on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, where they discussed his plans for the upcoming forum in November, plus his views on Ukraine and bridging ties with the Global South.
Watch more interviews from the UN General Assembly from Global Stage.
Every year, over ten million people globally die from high blood pressure, more than all infectious diseases combined. Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control, is tackling this massive problem in public health, among many others, as CEO of Resolve to Save Lives.
He told GZERO’s Tony Maciulis that ensuring easy access to three drugs — amlodipine for blood pressure, metformin for blood sugar, and atorvastatin for cholesterol — could save tens of millions of lives over the next quarter century for just a penny per pill.
It’s part of a set of goals Frieden calls the three Rs: Renaissance in public health, robust primary healthcare and resilient populations. But as the developing world takes on more and more public debt, where will the money come from?
See more from Global Stage.
Artificial intelligence’s immense potential power raises significant questions over its safety. Large language models, a kind of AI like Microsoft’s Bard or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, in particular, run the risk of providing potentially dangerous information.
Should someone, say, ask for instructions to build a bomb, or advice on harming themselves, it would be better that AI not answer the question at all. Instead, says Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith in a recent Global Stage livestream, from the sidelines of the 78th UN General Assembly, tech companies need to build in guardrails that will direct users toward counseling, or explain why they can’t answer.
And that’s just the first step. Microsoft aims to build a full safety architecture to help artificial intelligence technology flourish within safe boundaries.
Watch the full Global Stage Livestream conversation here: Hearing the Christchurch Call
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Protest in Yerevan following Azerbaijani military operation launch in Nagorno-Karabakh.
It was a quieter day at UN headquarters on Thursday. With US President Biden back at the White House – accompanied by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky – the crowds had thinned somewhat and fewer delegates could be found attending the debate in the UN General Assembly hall.
Much of the focus was on the crisis in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, where this week Azerbaijan launched a fresh assault on ethnic-Armenian separatists there, who then reportedly agreed to surrender and disarm as part of a ceasefire. Azerbaijan now looks set to take control of the enclave that's seen decades of conflict.
(For more on the recent flare up and its historical context, see our write up here.)
This was the focus of an urgent UN Security Council meeting called by the Armenian and French delegation on Thursday afternoon. Though they aren’t currently Council members, both Armenia and Azerbaijan attended the session to voice their grievances.
The focus of the Armenian representative reflected a sentiment that has been heard many times throughout the week, namely, that the UN Security Council is broken.
Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ararat Mirzoyan said that the chamber had failed to respond to previous warnings from Yerevan that the Azeris had been upping their attacks on the enclave. Indeed, this came a day after President Zelensky took aim at the Security Council for falling short of its stated mission by letting Russia torpedo efforts to stop the war. (See GZERO's explainer on Instagram on this ensuing debate.)
Despite Karabakh’s acceptance of a ceasefire, shelling continues, Mirzoyan said. The US, for its part, backed this claim, with UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield telling the Council that the “situation on the ground remains dire.”
What’s on deck tomorrow?
Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu will address the Assembly, along with Dutch PM Mark Rutte, Bangladesh’s PM Sheikh Hasina, and Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
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