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India called on the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on Tuesday to dismantle what it described as the entire ecosystem of terrorism, and said connectivity projects across the region would not last unless they respected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries they passed through Image Source: PIB India India's Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who led India’s delegation to the 25th meeting of the grouping’s Council of Heads of Government in the Tajik capital, said terrorism cost innocent lives, deterred investment and commerce, radicalised societies and denied young people opportunities. “There can be no justification for terrorism, no double standards in addressing it, and no place for those who finance, support, or provide safe havens to terrorists,” he said, according to a press statement from India’s defence ministry. On connectivity, he said India backed initiatives that linked markets and opened new routes for trade, naming the International North-South Tr...

The foreign ministers of India and Canada met in New Delhi on Wednesday to discuss defence, energy and a trade agreement both governments want concluded this year, three years after an assassination allegation reduced relations between the two countries to their lowest point in decades. Image Via: @DrSJaishankar on X EAM S Jaishankar and Anita Anand reviewed what India’s foreign ministry described as efforts to strengthen bilateral relations across the India-Canada strategic partnership. The two had a detailed exchange on security and defence cooperation and on expanding energy cooperation, the ministry said, and discussed trade, education, science and technology, people-to-people ties and cooperation in multilateral bodies. They welcomed progress towards an early conclusion of negotiations on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, and said the momentum in high-level contacts should be translated into tangible outcomes. Anand also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who d...

Indian  Prime Minister Narendra Modi told an international business audience on Tuesday that supply chains, energy, minerals, payment systems and technology were increasingly being used as instruments of pressure and dominance, and presented India as a dependable partner in a fractured world Representational Image Source: @MikeBloomberg on X The routes created by globalisation over past decades had in many cases become chokepoints, he said, addressing the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, which is reportedly being held in India for the first time. He named no country. The world had absorbed a pandemic, regional wars and disruptions to trade, critical minerals and energy in six years, Modi said, and was left with a question of trust: whether supplies would continue in a crisis, whether promises would be kept, whether a partner would stand by another country when it mattered. He built the address around a phrase he repeated throughout, “ power to empower ”, arguing that the test o...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 15 Of 15 Image Source: @UN on X Every September, world leaders come to the green marble podium of the General Assembly, deliver their national statements and leave. Most of what they say is forgotten within days. Read together rather than one at a time, the statements of this year's General Debate, held from September 22 to 28, record something larger than any one of them conveyed, that a broad, cross-regional admission that the distribution of power has moved faster than the institutions meant to manage it. The Secretary-General set the terms on the opening morning. "We are clearly moving towards a multipolar world. And that movement is irreversible," António Guterres said in his final address to a General Debate before his term ends. He did not present this as good news or bad news. He said multipolarity could take two shapes: a world of "fragmentation and transactionalism", or a "networked" one in which severa...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 14 Of 15 File Photo: @DrSJaishankar on X Malaysia told the UN General Assembly it was "sick of" the Security Council veto and called for its abolition, arguing that the world's "global majority" could no longer simply live with decisions taken by a few. Delivering Malaysia's national statement on Saturday, September 26, Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan said nowhere was the need for reform more critical. "No place requires reform more than the Security Council. No place more clearly exposes the weaknesses of the United Nations than the Security Council," he said. His frustration centred on Gaza. Malaysia and other states, he said, had pursued every avenue, including calls for an immediate ceasefire, unrestricted humanitarian aid, punitive action against Israel and full UN membership for Palestine. "Yet, again and again, the collective will of this assembly has encountered the silencing effect of the veto. ...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 13 Of 15 File Photo: @DrSJaishankar on X Belarus used the UN General Assembly to accuse the European Union of clinging to a "slipping dominance", a day after co-launching with Russia a Eurasian charter meant to anchor a multipolar order on the continent. Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov addressed the General Debate on Saturday, September 26. Turning the session's theme on the organisation itself, he said the UN "does not work for the benefit of all" and "does not manage change", blaming states he accused of deliberately undermining the system of international relations. He singled out the EU. Belarus, he said, was "concerned by the policies of the European Union's leadership", whose aim he described as preserving its "slipping dominance". He questioned whether Europeans wanted to become "cannon fodder" in a future war with Russia, and accused officials in Brussels of wanting to ...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 12 Of 15 Cuba told the UN General Assembly that the international system was dangerously close to falling into "the law of the jungle", as Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla accused the United States of imposing an "energy blockade" that has repeatedly brought down the island's power grid. Image Source: @BricsIndia2026 Addressing the General Debate on Saturday, September 26, Rodríguez said international law and the founding principles of the UN, among them the sovereign equality of States, were under "permanent attack" from expanding militarism and economic coercion. He called Washington's aim of imposing peace through force absurd and unachievable. He opened by recalling that 66 years earlier, almost to the hour, Fidel Castro had addressed the Assembly from the same podium. The centre of the speech was an account of US pressure since January. "Since January, 2026, this aggression has strengthene...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 11 Of 15 Image Source: @EOIBeijing on X China used its address to the 81st UN General Assembly to present itself as a defender of the post-war order against unilateral force, bloc politics and protectionism, while avoiding the explicit language of multipolarity used by some of its partners. Vice President Han Zheng, who delivered China's national statement on Saturday, September 26, said the UN-centred international system and the order underpinned by international law that emerged after the Second World War "must be upheld". He called on states to "reject the Cold War mindset and bloc confrontation" and to "oppose unilateral military actions that violate the UN Charter and circumvent Security Council authorization". Major countries, he said, "shoulder special responsibilities" and "should take the lead in complying with rules, upholding rule of law and doing what's right". He did not nam...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 10 Of 15 File Photo Via: @mfa_russia on X Russia used its address to the 81st UN General Assembly to argue that the era of Western dominance is ending, and to give that argument an institutional shape across Eurasia. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the General Debate on Saturday, September 26, that delegates had heard repeatedly, from the rostrum and in the corridors, that tectonic shifts were under way and that "a more just, multipolar world order is emerging before our very eyes". Countries of the Global South and East, he said, were asserting themselves as sovereign centres of growth and taking responsibility for security in their own regions. Quoting President Vladimir Putin, he said "the dictatorship of a single hegemon has run amok and is simply dangerous for everyone around it." The rest of the speech amounted to a charge sheet against the West. The "Western minority", which he said had dominated for fiv...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 9 Of 15 Image Source: @DrSJaishankar on X India told the UN General Assembly that the international order built after 1945 is giving way, and that the world is moving towards multipolarity whether its institutions are ready or not. "We are now well on our way towards a multi-polar world. The post-1945 order is giving way to new realities," External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in India's national statement on Saturday, September 26. "This process of adjustment, accommodation and acceptance will not be easy. Much of the turbulence that we witness today emanates from those very difficulties." The passage captured a long-held view in New Delhi that new centres of power are not in themselves the problem but institutions that have failed to adjust to them are. The inability of global institutions to keep the peace, Jaishankar said, was "not only weakening security, but is also threatening progress, slowing the pace...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 8 Of 15 Image Source: @miaamormottley on X Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley told the UN General Assembly that small states depend on the survival of fair international rules, warning that "without an equitable rules-based order, smaller States like mine will simply cease to exist in this world." Addressing the General Debate on Thursday, September 24, Mottley argued that the world's problem was not a lack of knowledge but a failure to act on it, and that UN reform could not stop at administrative changes. "We cannot move swiftly to reorganize offices and reporting lines while allowing the most consequential questions of power and representation to remain unresolved," she said. "Reform cannot be selective." "So yes, let us improve the machinery. But let us also reform the exercise of power," she said. She pointed to Africa's lack of a permanent Security Council seat and to the absence of assured...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 7 Of 15 File Photo Via: @JDMahama on X Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama told the UN General Assembly that Africa's lack of a permanent seat on the Security Council is "fundamentally unacceptable in the 21st century", and warned of "a dangerous drift toward unilateralism, lawlessness, and the erosion of multilateral norms". Addressing the General Debate on Thursday, September 24, Mahama argued that past injustices remain built into today's power structures. "Africa is home to 1.5 billion people, over 18 per cent of humanity, and constitutes the largest regional voting bloc in this General Assembly. Yet, Africa remains without a single permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council," he said. "We cannot credibly champion the sovereign equality of nations while preserving a global governance structure designed for the post-war geopolitical realities," he continued. "Security Counc...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 6 Of 15 File Photo Via: @RonaldLamola on X South Africa told the UN General Assembly that economic coercion and Africa's exclusion from global decision-making are eroding trust in the multilateral system, and demanded permanent African seats on the Security Council "with all the prerogatives of permanent membership". Ronald Lamola, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, delivered the national statement on Thursday, September 24, which is Heritage Day in South Africa. He opened by recalling that 60 years ago the Assembly condemned apartheid as a crime against humanity, calling apartheid's fall "a glorious story that attests to what multilateralism can deliver". That history framed what followed. South Africa, he said, had built "a democracy strong enough to withstand and resist attempts at external supervision and tutelage". He did not say from where such attempts came. On coercion he was direc...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 5 Of 15 File Photo Via: @drpezeshkian on X Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the UN General Assembly that his country would not yield to military pressure or sanctions, and accused the United States and Israel of benefiting from a double standard the international system has failed to confront. He spoke on Wednesday, September 23, a day after US President Donald Trump told the same Assembly he was weighing a deal with Tehran against "annihilating" Iran. Pezeshkian said he had planned different remarks before hearing Trump. "Iran must be understood by Mr. Trump, and those who seek to bully us," he said. "We are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force." The speech was delivered in wartime. The United States and Israel began their war on Iran in February, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an airstrike on Tehran. A 60-day ceasefire agreed in April b...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 4 Of 15 Image Source: @sanchezcastejon on X Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for the abolition of the Security Council veto at the 81st UN General Assembly, placing Madrid among a small number of Western governments backing one of the Global South's longest-standing demands for reform. "We must reform the Security Council. So that all regions of the world are fairly represented. And to put an end to the permanent members' right of veto," Sánchez said in his address on Wednesday, September 23. "Because, as the United Nations Charter states, no country should be both judge and party at the same time. However powerful it may be." He opened with a statement of purpose. "I take the floor here with a single aim, and that is to defend what many are trying to destroy," he said, referring to principles that "various governments, represented here, either scorn or seek to dismantle". He did not...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 1 Of 15 Image Source: @Sidhant on X Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the General Debate of the 81st UN General Assembly on Tuesday, September 22, with a speech that framed the moment as a choice between two kinds of world. "We are called to choose between multilateralism or unilateralism, democracy or extremism, sovereignty or subordination," Lula told world leaders, speaking shortly before US President Donald Trump took the same podium. It was the tenth time Lula had opened the debate, a role Brazil has held by custom since the 1950s. He said it was the most critical moment for the United Nations since he first addressed the Assembly in 2003, and that the feeling driving him was indignation. His sharpest words were reserved for the rules of global trade. "The pillars of multilateralism are being corroded. The World Trade Organization is on life support," he said. "When governments capitulate in t...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 2 Of 15 Image Source: @RTErdogan Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan returned to the UN General Assembly with the slogan that has defined his speeches for more than a decade, and a proposal that goes further than most calls for Security Council reform. "We must acknowledge that a system in which the will of more than 190 countries is subject to the whim of just five countries is not a fair system, and it is not capable of fully inspiring or establishing trust either," Erdoğan said on the opening day of the General Debate of the 81st session, Tuesday, September 22. "The world is bigger than five." Erdoğan turned the phrase into a slogan in his first General Assembly speech as president in 2014 and has returned to it repeatedly since. This year he paired it with a call, according to reports of the speech, to abolish the veto held by the five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, ...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 3 Of 15 File Photo/Representational: Via: @alexstubb on X Finland's President Alexander Stubb offered one of the clearest Western readings of the multipolar shift at the 81st UN General Assembly, acknowledging that power is moving away from the West while warning that a multipolar world without cooperation will end in conflict. "We seem to be going the other way: towards a non-cooperative multipolar world order," Stubb told the General Debate on Tuesday, September 22. "This order, as it turns out, is based on zero-sum deals, transactions, and unrestrained power. This is a short-sighted approach." Such an order, he said, "will ultimately lead to conflict. It will turn against us, whether you represent a great power, a middle power, or a small state, like Finland." His diagnosis echoed the Secretary-General's warning earlier that day that multipolarity could take the form of fragmentation and transactionalism....