The general debate of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly has been under way in New York since 22 September. Heads of State and Government and other high-level representatives are addressing the plenary until 26 September and again on 28 September. The session’s theme is “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations That Delivers for All”. Presiding is Khalilur Rahman of Bangladesh, elected President of the General Assembly in June. For António Guterres, it is the last general debate as Secretary-General; his second term ends on 31 December 2026.
Trust as the guiding theme
When he opened the session on 8 September, Rahman put the question of trust front and centre. “Trust cannot simply be requested — it must be earned,” he said. His priorities include prevention and political solutions to conflict, sustainable development and climate action, human rights, bridging digital divides and strengthening multilateralism itself – including support for the UN80 Initiative, full and timely payment of assessed contributions, and a fair, inclusive and transparent process for selecting the next Secretary-General.
Guterres: four tests of power
Opening the debate, Guterres described four “tests of power” – war and peace, inequality, climate change and artificial intelligence – that will determine whether the world moves towards a new era of cooperation or deeper division. “The faultlines in our world are widening,” he said. “Cracks have become canyons.” He warned against a slide into rival blocs and called, among other things, for Security Council reform, faster debt relief, bolder multilateral development banks and a multilateral AI risk management framework with independent oversight.
Differing readings of the world organization
The first days of the debate showed how differently the UN’s role is assessed: views ranged from fundamental criticism of its ability to guarantee collective security to emphasis on its indispensability as a forum for dialogue, including between adversaries. The conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the situation in Haiti, featured in many statements, often with reference to knock-on effects such as rising food and energy prices far beyond the regions affected. Several African leaders renewed the call for permanent African representation on the Security Council, where the continent’s 54 Member States currently hold no permanent seat.
UN80 and the question of money
Meanwhile, the Organization is being restructured. According to the Secretary-General, the UN80 Initiative, launched in 2025, has moved from diagnosis to design and, increasingly, implementation. The changes for 2026 include a 21 per cent reduction in Secretariat posts, the relocation of functions to lower-cost locations and shared administrative services. With resolution 80/251, the General Assembly has also created a tool for systematically reviewing mandates.
The backdrop is a persistent liquidity crisis. By the end of April, only 51.4 per cent of the roughly $3.3 billion in total assessments had been collected. In June, Member States agreed to end the practice of crediting back funds that were never actually received, a decades-old rule that had further strained the Organization’s cash position. Guterres summed up the dilemma: “Efficiency can make every dollar work harder. It cannot make an unpaid dollar appear.”
Choosing the next Secretary-General
The Security Council has so far held three informal, closed-door straw polls on the candidates – on 30 July, 21 August and 18 September. No official results are published; according to consistent media reports, no consensus has yet emerged. Ultimately, the five permanent members must be able to support a candidate; on the Council’s recommendation, the General Assembly then appoints the new Secretary-General, who is due to take office on 1 January 2027. Civil society campaigns are calling for a woman to lead the United Nations for the first time.
Other priorities of high-level week
Around the general debate, high-level meetings address climate action and the just transition, the fortieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development, sea-level rise – where a UN declaration was approved on 24 September – and, today, pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Meetings on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Durban Declaration and on the total elimination of nuclear weapons follow through 29 September.
Assessment
The general debate is less a venue for decisions than a seismograph of how governments read the world and the role of the United Nations. In 2026, three developments coincide – a far-reaching restructuring of the Organization under financial pressure, a change at its helm and the ongoing debate over how representative the Security Council is. The answers will shape the multilateral system’s capacity to act for years to come, including the debate on a development framework beyond 2030.
For diplomacy, business and society, the conclusion is clear: where formal negotiating channels are under strain, reliable formats for dialogue that bring actors together across political divides and sectors become more important. Trust, the guiding theme of this session, grows where dialogue leads to verifiable results.
Photo credit: United Nations General Assembly Hall, New York (archive image, 2011). Photo: Basil D Soufi, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0; cropped.
