UN General Assembly: ‘There’s no alternative’ to the diplomatic stage in New York

For over eight decades, the UN General Assembly has served as the world’s most representative forum, bringing nations together to debate some of the defining challenges of the day.

When it was founded in 1945, the architects of the UN expected the Security Council to be at the centre of global decision-making. But Cold War tensions soon sowed division – shifting much of the political debate to the assembly.

Richard Gowan, Director of UN and Multilateral Diplomacy at the International Crisis Group in New York, tells UN News’s Ana Carmo that, despite repeated predictions of its demise, the assembly remains indispensable.