News headlines in 2021, page 92

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines urged on Tuesday all United Nations Member States to reverse course on inequality, saying the issue will define humanity’s future. 

Despite the heavy impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Somalia has continued on the path to economic reform, President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed said in a pre-recorded speech to the 76th session of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

In his speech to the high-level General Debate at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Iranian President Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi called for an end to United States sanctions against his country, describing them as a method of waging war.

China is set to provide more COVID-19 vaccines to the world and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, President Xi Jinping told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, urging global leaders to strengthen solidarity, promote mutual respect while rejecting “forming small circles or zero-sum games.”

The UN needs to usher in and lead a new “era of global community”, and the Republic of Korea will do all it can to support a revived world order based on solidarity and cooperation, the nation’s President, Moon Jae-in, told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

The President of Democratic Republic of Congo, Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, asked for United Nations Member States to “materialize all the promises made to Africa in compensation for the sacrifices agreed to protect humanity against global warming.” 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday welcomed important commitments made towards climate action by the world’s two largest economies, as the 76th High Level Debate began in New York.

Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan last month, they have made some commitments to uphold human rights. However, their subsequent actions have “sadly contradicted” those promises, the UN rights chief told a side event of the General Assembly on Tuesday.

Top politicians joined award-winning African performers and others on Tuesday, in New York, to take part in a special event organized by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), to discuss how COVID-19 vaccines can be fairly distributed worldwide, as a key priority for development. 

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and migration agency IOM, called on Tuesday for an immediate investigation into the deaths of four people near the border between Poland and Belarus, due to causes yet to be determined.