What is it and what does the UN General Assembly do? - MPPRE

What is it and what does the UN General Assembly do?

“Making the United Nations relevant to all: global leadership and shared responsibilities for achieving peaceful, equitable and sustainable societies” will be the focus of the General Debate of the 73rd session of the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), which opened on September 18 under the presidency of the Ecuadorian diplomat María Fernanda Espinosa.

Established in 1945, the General Assembly is the main organ of the United Nations where some of the most important decisions in the world are made. It is held every September, the General Debate in which the political, economic and social situation of the planet is addressed.

The General Assembly is the normative and deliberative body of the UN, and the only one that has universal representation as its 193 member States are represented.

Each nation has the same decision-making power, which requires a two-thirds majority when it comes to matters of vital importance: peace and security, the admission of new members and budgetary matters, among other issues.

The principal organ of the United Nations also elects the General Secretary of the multilateral organization and the members of the Security Council.

Under its auspices, more than 500 international Treaties have been adopted. In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals were approved by the General Assembly.

This year, the General Debate will take place between September 25 and October 1. The intervention of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is scheduled for Thursday, September 27, the day will also involve the representations of Vietnam, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Palestine, European Union, Israel, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands, Jamaica and Spain .

Apart from this debate, the national delegation will fulfill an important diplomatic agenda of a bilateral and multilateral nature; in this last area, the exercise of the presidency of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries (Mnoal) that the oil nation has held since September 2016.

Venezuela: an insurgent voice against imperialism in the General Assembly

It has been, precisely, the General Assembly of the United Nations the main forum of agreement where the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has raised its voice firmly before the hegemonic pretensions of the government of the United States, during the last two decades.

Just this September 20 marks 12 years of the historic and memorable speech of Commander Hugo Chávez before the General Assembly, during which he responded forcefully to the American ex-president, George Bush, and denounced not only the policies of the North American government against those countries that he called the “axis of evil”, but also the pretensions of Washington’s world domination.

“They want to impose on us the democratic model as they conceive it, the false democracy of the elites; also a very original democratic model, imposed by bombs, bombing and imposed through invasions and cannon fire, what kind of democracy”, warned the then venezuelan leader in 2006.

In his historic speech, in which he initially pronounced the famous phrase “smells like sulfur”, Comandante Chávez also denounced the threats of the United States against Venezuela and -in parallel- proposed the “refoundation” of the organization, considering that the United Nations’ system was turned into a merely deliberative body without any power to impact the reality of the world.

Under threats

Twelve years have passed since then and far from ceasing threats, the current US administration has intensified its hostile policy on Caracas. Even President Donald Trump himself threatened the use of military force against Venezuela.

The antecedent of these and other interventionist intentions is found in the Executive Order signed in March 2015 by former President Barack Obama, according to which he declared the Bolivarian Republic as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the security” of the North American country.

In due to that decision, the United States has imposed a series of unilateral coercive measures on the Venezuelan State, including the alleged sanctions on President Nicolás Maduro and other high-level officials of the Venezuelan Government.

The disastrous consequences of these actions have been denounced on repeated occasions by the Foreign Minister of the Republic, Jorge Arreaza, in different international forums; among them, the UN Human Rights Council.

“They have made it difficult for Venezuela to receive what is fundamental and basic for production, for food, for the health of our people,” the diplomat specified on September 11 from Geneva.

It is in this context that the venezuelan delegation will attend the 73rd session of the General Assembly of the United Nations to reject, once again, interference and interventionist threats from Washington on Caracas.