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5 BIG STORIES THAT WILL DRIVE THE AGENDA DURING UN WEEK

UN Week is nearly here! From the Pope, to Putin, to Peacekeeping, here are the big stories that will drive the
diplomatic agenda in Turtle Bay.

1) The Global Goals

UN Week kicks o on a high note on Friday, with the opening of a special summit on the Sustainable
Development Goals. Pope Francis will be one of the rst to address the summit on Friday morning. President
Obama is helping to close the session on Sunday. In between are over 150 speakers, mostly heads of state.

The SDG summit is a very big deal for the United Nations, and quite possibly for all of humanity. It is the
culmination of over two years of negotiations over what should replace the Millennium Development Goals,
which expire at the end of this year. The SDGs or, the Global Goals, as the advocacy community has taken to
calling them are an aspirational set of 17 goals and 169 targets that every country on the planet is pledging to
work toward from now until 2030.

The top goal is nothing less than the total eradication of extreme poverty (as de ned by people living on $1.25
per day), and each of the goals have embedded in them principles of environmental sustainability. Eliminating
diseases like HIV and Malaria; sharply reducing maternal mortality rates; and substantially increasing renewable
sources of energy are just a few of the 169 targets to which the most important global leaders are signing their
names. Its a massively ambitious agenda and if its achieved, life for most of the 8 billion on earth in 2030 will be
vastly improved. It all starts with the Popes speech on Friday.

2) Syrian Refugee Crisis

Every UN Summit since 2012 has included important meetings about the con ict in Syria and its humanitarian
consequences. But this time something is di erent: after four years of con ict and over 4 million refugees, the
crisis in Syria has suddenly became a political and humanitarian crisis in Europe.

For the United Nations, the Syrian refugee crisis is part of a deeper and more endemic challenge to the
humanitarian relief system. Globally, there are more refugees and displaced in the world today than at anytime
since World War Two. The Syria con ict is by far the largest driver of displacement. But con ict in Iraq, South
Sudan, a horribly abusive regime in Eritrea and the Nepal earthquake have created an unprecedented strain on
the patchwork of NGOs and UN agencies that deliver humanitarian aid. At the heart of this crisis is donor fatigue.
For Syrian refugees alone, donors have only contributed $1.8 billion against a $4.5 billion appeal. This massive
funding gap has translated into less aidincluding a reduction in food aid for Syrians living in Lebanon.

Ban Ki Moon will host yet another high level meeting on the Syrian humanitarian crisis on the sidelines of the
General Assembly. The meeting is scheduled for September 30. A number of heads of state and foreign ministers
will be in attendance, and we can expect some new pledges of humanitarian assistance ahead of this meeting.
This year, though the high level meeting will be far more politically resonant to Europe than in years past for
the simple fact that the Europeans are nally feeling the consequences of letting the Syrian con ict fester
unabated for nearly half a decade.

3) A UN Peacekeeping Summit
 Indian peacekeeper in the DRC. (Photo: Julien
Harneis)

On Monday afternoon, after his speech to the General Assembly, President Obama will host a special summit on
UN Peacekeeping. Strengthening the institution of UN Peacekeeping has been a key priority of President
Obamas since his rst UNGA in 2009, when he held a reception for the top troop contributing countries to UN
Peacekeeping. Last year, Vice President Biden chaired a meeting of dozens of countries that pledged to increase
their contributions to UN Peacekeeping. This meeting is being similarly billed as a pledging conference but
this time, Obama will be presiding so the pledges and participation will likely be more substantial.

At issue is the fact that UN Peacekeeping is under severe strain. There are over 100,000 Blue Helmets deployed
to 16 missions worldwide. Most of these Blue Helmets are from the developing world, with units generally under
equipped or lacking certain capacities, like helicopters. The USA has very few troops deployed to peacekeeping
missionsabout 80 but it is the largest nancial contributor to peacekeeping, ponying up about 28% of of $8
billion price tag.

President Obama is hosting this conference to leverage new contributions to UN Peacekeeping particularly from
European countries, which have largely stayed out of peacekeeping for the last 20 years. A key metric of success
for this pledging conference will be the extent to which European countries feel compelled to make meaningful
new contributions of sophisticated units or assets that are sorely needed by UN Peacekeeping.
4) Putin in the House

Vladimir Putin will make his rst visit to the United Nations in ten years. The Russian leader will address the
General Assembly on Monday and likely focus his remarks on Syria, speci cally the need to support forces inside
Syria that are ghting the Islamic State. For Russia, that means bolstering the Syrian government, a proposal that
USA and its European allies are loathe to support.

Russia also happens to hold the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month. On September 30th,
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov will chair a meeting of the Security Council focused on terrorism in the
middle east. This meeting wont move the needle on Syria, but it will be clarifying. Expect Russia to forcefully insist
that the West is obsessed with the removal of Assad to the detriment of the ght against ISIS; and expect the USA
and its European allies to make the case that Assads crimes created the context from which ISIS emerged and
draws strength. As has been the case of the previous four years, the sharp divide between Russia and the west is
what has paralyzed the Security Council from taking meaningful steps toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis.
With Putin joining Obama in New York, expect those di erences to be even more sharply manifest.

5) Wholl Replace Ban Ki Moon?

This will be Ban Ki Moons second to last UNGA, and last UNGA before hes relegated to lame duck status. Though
its not on any formal agenda, expect many backroom discussions over not just who should replace Ban as the
next Secretary General, but how that decision will be made.

Since the founding of the United Nations 70 years ago, the permanent ve member of the Security Council have
exercised exclusive control over process of selecting a Secretary General. Its been done largely in secret and
without much input from the rest of the world. This year might be di erent. For several months, key UN member
states (including the UK) have backed proposals to open up the process. On September 11th this year, the
General Assembly adopted a resolution calling on each UN member state to receive basic information about the
candidates and asking the Security Council to set a clear timetable for selecting Bans replacement. This may
seem like a baby step, but its a big change over how things have been done since 1945.

The question of who may replace Ban Ki Moon is a tough one. There is mounting pressureeven from Ban Ki
Moon himselfthat Bans replacement ought to be a woman. Also, by tradition (though not any binding, formal
agreement) 2016 is supposed to be Eastern Europes turn to hold the spot. That has put the Bulgarian UNESCO
chief Irina Bokova and Croatias foreign ministerVesna Pusi as early front runners. Other names being oated
include Former New Zealand prime minister and UNDP administrator Helen Clark and Alicia Barcena, a UN
diplomat and former environment minister of Mexico. Dont expect any huge movement on this question in the
coming week. But do expect questions of process to be raised by member states, in both public and private
throughout the week.

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Mark Leon Goldberg is the managing editor of UN Dispatch

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