Special edition: UNGA pressure from Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump delivered an often disparaging, grievance-filled address to the 80th United Nations General Assembly, blaming the U.N. for facilitating uncontrolled migration, denouncing the Europeans’ energy policies, calling climate change a hoax, and outlining a long list of the greatest things in history he claims he has achieved for America and the world.

“Everyone says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said in a nearly one-hour speech to the 193-member U.N. General Assembly yesterday, claiming to have personally ended seven wars in his first seven months in office, a claim questioned by many.

Trump provided few details on his specific plans for the U.N.’s role in the world, and offered little clarity on whether the U.S. intends to press ahead with further draconian budget cuts. But he underscored the need for other countries to follow his lead and crack down on migration.

Uncontrolled migration, he warned in his first address to the U.N. since his reelection, is “the number one political issue of our time,” he said. “Your countries, they’re being destroyed.”

“It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders. You have to end it now,” he said. “Your countries are going to hell.”

The U.N.’s refugee and migration agencies have historically played a role in supporting previous U.S. administrations’ efforts to manage legal immigration to the U.S. But the Trump administration has rolled back those policies

In opening the session, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres painted a very different picture of a dystopian world, plagued by inequality, global warming, and rising authoritarianism. For her part, the U.N.’s new General Assembly president, Annalena Baerbock, delivered what appeared to be a lightly veiled jab at the Trump administration.

“True leadership is about lifting others up, not out of altruism, but for our mutual benefit, and even out of our self-interest,” she said. “It’s not about imposing your will or putting others down.”

Trump’s speech started off on an awkward note.

The escalator leading him and First Lady Melania Trump to the General Assembly hall stalled. Then, the teleprompter stopped working. “The teleprompter is not working,” he told delegates, and half-joked: “I can only say whoever’s operating the teleprompter is in big trouble.”

“I ended seven wars and never even received a phone call from the U.N.,”’ he said. “There are two things I got from the U.N.: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”

A U.N. official told Devex that the United States, not the U.N., was operating the teleprompter from a U.S. government laptop.

Later, the U.N.’s chief spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, suggested that was not the case with the president and the first lady. A videographer from the U.S. delegation documenting the presidential couple’s arrival “may have inadvertently triggered the safety function,” bringing the escalator to a halt, Dujarric said in a prepared statement.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has butted heads with Trump over the South American country’s Supreme Court’s conviction of former President Jair Bolsonaro for trying to stage a coup after he lost his reelection bid, sharply criticized Trump, without mentioning his name, in his address. But in the waiting room after the speech, it was all hugs with Trump, who said the two had “excellent chemistry.”

 “I saw him, he saw me, and we embraced,” Trump said. “We actually agreed that we would meet next week.”

Read more: UNGA80 reporters’ notebook — Day 2

Migration headache

Christopher Landau, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, will host a panel of representatives from migrant-sending and -receiving countries as well as transit countries on Thursday afternoon at the Palace Hotel, aiming to reform the international migration system.

“This meeting seeks to jump-start a new international conversation on protection and asylum, with the aim of tangible reforms to the international protection regime,” according to the U.S. concept note, which was reviewed by Devex. Reuters has previously reported on the note.

The note claims that the “abuse undermines the credibility of the asylum system globally,” and proposes the international community “returns to and advances core principles grounded in sovereignty and democratic accountability.” And it outlines U.S. plans to export its refugee and migration policies globally.

It proposes:

1. That every nation has the absolute right to control its border.

2. That there is no right to immigrate or to receive asylum in a specific country of choice.

3. That asylum is a temporary, not permanent status, and the asylees should ultimately return home.

4. That sovereign states, not transnational bodies, make the determination whether conditions in a country or origin permits return.

5. That every country is obligated to accept the return of its nationals expeditiously.

“The meeting will be open to the press and held in English,” the note states. “We welcome as co-sponsors all those who share our vision of reform.”  

Mixed messages

For months, the White House has been proposing plans to end decades of financial support for U.N. peacekeeping missions, accusing such spending as “wasteful” and informing Congress of its intention to give nothing to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning blue helmets in its 2026 budget. But diplomats in New York don’t seem to have received the memo.

Sure, U.S. officials have backed a plan to wind down the U.N. mission in Lebanon. But over the summer, the U.S. led discussions in the council that resulted in the extension of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. And U.S. diplomats are currently championing a U.S. proposal for the U.N. Security Council to deploy a multinational Gang Suppression Force in Haiti of more than 5,000 foreign troops and police. It proposes that the force would be funded by voluntary contributions, not by obligatory assessed contributions.

The arrangement is consistent with U.S. efforts to broadly shift funding from obligatory assessed contributions to voluntary. The downside is that if the U.S. wants this force to work, it will likely have to shoulder the financial burden of standing it up — not the 25% of the budget it would likely pay to fund it through assessed U.N. peacekeeping funds. “Absolutely. [We] need assessed funding, and you need troops that are specialized in what need to be done, and there needs to be a legitimate or effective political process to move the whole thing forward, and not just counter gangs for the next 10 years,” Anthony Banbury, a veteran U.N. troubleshooter, told me in an interview at the Devex Impact House.

+ Don’t miss out on today’s hard-hitting conversations on timely global development issues and networking events we’re offering on the sidelines of UNGA80. Not in New York? Register now to receive on-demand content from the Devex Impact House @ UNGA80. 

Leaderboard

The process for selecting a U.N. secretary-general has long felt a bit like choosing the pope, a secretive affair dominated by a select group of five permanent Security Council members. But the 193-member U.N. General Assembly recently outlined a series of procedures and requirements aimed at gaining a greater say in the selection process, and even set up an election timeline, in which member states are free to put forward the names of candidates in the coming months. They will be encouraged to provide a vision statement, a personal bio, disclose their sources of campaign funding, and submit to a webcast interactive dialogue with the U.N. General Assembly.

The resolution encouraged member states to “strongly consider nominating women,” and noted that every secretary-general in U.N. history has been male. It also underscored the importance of fielding candidates who “embody the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity, and a firm commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter.”    

The U.N.’s five big powers — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States — have traditionally looked to the General Assembly to rubber-stamp candidates they have chosen via secret ballot. In closed-door negotiations, the U.S. and others sought to water down the selection rules.

For instance, the U.S. delegation proposed eliminating a paragraph encouraging that the selection process take “gender balance” and “geographical rotation” into account when picking a U.N. leader, according to notes of the internal negotiations reviewed by Devex. The U.S. also objected to the inclusion of language indicating that the selection process should be “guided by the principles of transparency and inclusiveness.” Russia endorsed the U.S. position.

Washington also opposed the inclusion of the phrase urging states to nominate candidates “embody[ing] the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity, and a firm commitment to the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter.” China, Russia, and the U.K. also agreed to the U.S proposal. Diplomats said that the five powers’ objections had more to do with preserving their prerogatives in the election process, rather than opposition to assuring the new secretary-general is competent.

Before sunset

In his proposal for structural reform, Guterres proposed a plan “to sunset UNAIDS by the end of 2026” and “mainstreaming capacity and expertise into relevant entities of the UN development system in 2027.”

Now, that sounds to me like Guterres wants to shutter UNAIDS.

But a press release from UNAIDS proposes a different path. The infectious disease agency has developed its own reform initiative, which calls for a 55% workforce reduction in its secretariat, from 661 posts to 294. It will be present in only 54 countries, down from 85, with a particularly light footprint in 40. Still, UNAIDS insists it will still be able to support countries where 80% of people living with HIV reside, and where 71% of infections occur. It promises to present a plan for the further future to its board in June of 2027.

Who does this guy think he is, the sun king?

When the U.S. presidential convoy passes, even presidents have to wait. On Monday night, French President Emmanuel Macron and his entourage found out the hard way, stranded on a midtown street as Trump glided past. So Macron pulled out his phone to call Trump and turned it into a moment to chat: “Guess what. I’m waiting in the street because everything is frozen for you,” Macron told Trump.  

A member of the French president’s entourage made it clear there were no hard feelings. “Taking advantage of the pause, the President placed a phone call to Donald Trump,” the source said. The exchange, the official said, was “warm and friendly, and provided an opportunity to touch base on a number of international issues.”

Love you, love you not

In February, Trump instructed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to conduct a 180-day review of international agencies with a view toward seeing which agencies deserve U.S. funding and which don’t. The deadline passed months ago.

The president made it clear early in his term that he would cut funding to the World Health Organization, the U.N. Population Fund, UNESCO, and withdraw American participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council. But there are a number of U.N. outfits that have long been in conservatives’ crosshairs.

Brett Schaefer, a longtime critic of the U.N. at the American Enterprise Institute, has compiled a list of agencies the U.S. should continue supporting — these include the United Nations, the international Civil Aviation Organization, and the World Food Programme. On the other hand, the list of agencies he considers “irrelevant or harmful” to U.S. interests or suffers from “managerial or political liabilities that impede positive contributions” to Americans includes the U.N. Development Programme, the International Renewable Energy Agency, and the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.  

Popularity contest

That’s the proportion of Americans who say they approve of the United Nations’ performance — a 41% drop from when the institution was founded 80 years ago. Those are the early findings from a new Gallup study, the full analysis of which will reveal global perception of the U.N. next year, writes Devex’s Elissa Miolene.

“Does that mean that the U.S. has given up on the United Nations?” Jon Clifton, the CEO of Gallup, asked a packed audience at the Concordia annual summit on Monday. The answer, he said, was no, noting that when Gallup asked Americans whether the U.N. should still exist, 60% still said yes. “This isn’t about getting rid of the U.N. They just want it to do better.”

+ Check out our dedicated page for updates on the latest news, events, tid-bits, and behind-the-scenes interviews and reporting from UNGA80.

Sign up to Newswire for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development.