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The Hamburg Sustainability Conference (HSC) 2026 convened around 1,600 participants from 112 countries at a moment of profound disruption and redistribution of power. The HSC confirmed sustainability as the organizing framework linking peace and stability, economic
resilience and competitiveness, planetary boundaries and international cooperation. The rules-based international order is under pressure, fiscal space is shrinking and conflicts are multiplying, while climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion are compounding
these pressures on economies and societies already stretched thin. Yet the world has never possessed greater technological capabilities, financial wealth and scientific knowledge. What matters now is how we use these resources to deliver shared prosperity and resilience.
The discussions at HSC 2026 can be summarized along three narrative arcs. The first asks why cooperation remains essential in a more multipolar world. Legitimacy depends on changing the terms of North–South relations, broadening representation and building a cooperative multipolar order in which a wider group of actors can shape and defend common rules. The launch of the South–North Commission on Development offers a structured process for rethinking international cooperation toward fairer partnerships and a  sustainability Agenda beyond 2030. The second narrative arc examines what needs to change. Sustainability transformation pays
off economically, but only where investment can flow, risks are shared and governance is predictable. Nature and human capital are systematically undervalued. The bottleneck is the institutional and financing structures needed to unlock them at scale. The third narrative arc addresses how cooperation can deliver. It shows that partnerships accelerate sustainable development when they move from one-off initiatives to systems that mobilize finance, create markets and build local capabilities. Scaling Capital for Sustainable Development (SCALED), Innovative Capital Mobilization in Africa (ICAMA), critical-mineral and hydrogen partnerships, and urban examples from Mombasa and eThekwini show how tangible forms of cooperation can turn commitments into sustainable investment, deeper value chains and locally owned action. This shift is especially visible in Africa, where partnerships are increasingly framed around opportunity, value creation and agency. The road ahead runs through the Triple COP+ year, the G20 under UK chairmanship, and the SDG Summit in September 2027. HSC 2026 demonstrated that navigating the new - disruptive - normal is possible. The task now is to prove it at scale. […]

The Hamburg Sustainability Conference (HSC) 2026 convened around 1,600 participants from 112 countries at a moment of profound disruption and redistribution of power. The HSC confirmed sustainability as the organizing framework linking peace and stability, economic
resilience and competitiveness, planetary boundaries and international cooperation. The rules-based international order is under pressure, fiscal space is shrinking and conflicts are multiplying, while climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion are compounding
these pressures on economies and societies already stretched thin. Yet the world has never possessed greater technological capabilities, financial wealth and scientific knowledge. What matters now is how we use these resources to deliver shared prosperity and resilience.
The discussions at HSC 2026 can be summarized along three narrative arcs. The first asks why cooperation remains essential in a more multipolar world. Legitimacy depends on changing the terms of North–South relations, broadening representation and building a cooperative multipolar order in which a wider group of actors can shape and defend common rules. The launch of the South–North Commission on Development offers a structured process for rethinking international cooperation toward fairer partnerships and a  sustainability Agenda beyond 2030. The second narrative arc examines what needs to change. Sustainability transformation pays
off economically, but only where investment can flow, risks are shared and governance is predictable. Nature and human capital are systematically undervalued. The bottleneck is the institutional and financing structures needed to unlock them at scale. The third narrative arc addresses how cooperation can deliver. It shows that partnerships accelerate sustainable development when they move from one-off initiatives to systems that mobilize finance, create markets and build local capabilities. Scaling Capital for Sustainable Development (SCALED), Innovative Capital Mobilization in Africa (ICAMA), critical-mineral and hydrogen partnerships, and urban examples from Mombasa and eThekwini show how tangible forms of cooperation can turn commitments into sustainable investment, deeper value chains and locally owned action. This shift is especially visible in Africa, where partnerships are increasingly framed around opportunity, value creation and agency. The road ahead runs through the Triple COP+ year, the G20 under UK chairmanship, and the SDG Summit in September 2027. HSC 2026 demonstrated that navigating the new - disruptive - normal is possible. The task now is to prove it at scale. […]

AMENDMENTS 1 - 102 - Draft report Shaping the EU's external action to address the human rights challenges posed by artificial intelligence
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Nacho Sánchez Amor

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 102 - Draft report Shaping the EU's external action to address the human rights challenges posed by artificial intelligence
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Nacho Sánchez Amor

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Over the previous two months, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hosted a NATO summit in Ankara and attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek. On his way back, Erdoğan presented the latter as part of Turkey’s “commitment to diversifying its economic, political, and strategic options”. This is not far removed from the usual analytical vocabulary. Ankara’s ability to straddle East and West is variously described as balancing, hedging or seeking strategic autonomy.

There are important differences between these concepts. Yet they often direct attention towards the same question: Where does Turkey stand in relation to the great powers? Turkish practices become evidence of the country’s position. The risk is that position then becomes a shortcut for assessing agency.

This can distort assessments in both directions. A focus on positioning can overestimate agency when the practice, purpose and effects of balancing are collapsed into one another. Maintaining relationships with competing powers may be intended to preserve flexibility and may, in turn, expand Ankara’s diplomatic repertoire. But such effects do not by themselves establish what Turkey can achieve through the options that these relationships create. At the same time, viewing Turkish foreign policy primarily through alignment can underestimate agency when practices that do not alter Turkey’s geopolitical position are overlooked, despite altering what Ankara can do.

The appeal of a balancing lens is understandable. It makes seemingly contradictory practices intelligible as part of a broader strategy. But explaining their strategic logic is not the same as assessing their effects. 

What becomes visible if we set aside balancing as the primary lens?

The test in the Black Sea 

Turkey’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has commonly been read as a balancing act. Ankara has not joined Western sanctions against Russia and has maintained political and economic ties with Moscow. At the same time, it has provided military support to Ukraine and applied the Montreux Convention to the passage of warships through the Turkish Straits, with consequences for Black Sea and non-Black Sea states alike. Read in this way, these policies appear to place Ankara somewhere between Russia and its Western allies. But a practice can matter without moving Turkey anywhere geopolitically.

More than four years later, Turkey continues to regulate naval access to the Straits. Together with Romania and Bulgaria, it operates the Black Sea Mine Countermeasures Task Group, whose mandate has expanded from mine clearance to the protection of critical undersea infrastructure following the Ankara NATO summit in July. Amid renewed attacks on commercial shipping, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has announced a proposal for the safe passage of grain, which Turkey is discussing with both Russia and Ukraine.

The basis of Turkish capacity is different in each case. Montreux gives Ankara authority over naval access within rules that also limit its discretion. Mine countermeasures are conducted through operational cooperation with Romania and Bulgaria. Relations with both Moscow and Kyiv create an opportunity for Ankara to broker an arrangement over commercial navigation, but not the conditions for agreement. Ankara’s agency is thus more specific, conditional and relational than the balancing vocabulary allows us to see.

What follows from where Turkey stands?

Turkey may well balance. The problem begins when balancing becomes the primary lens through which everything else is seen. It places great-power relations at the centre of the analysis, even where the capacity in question is produced elsewhere. Shifting the focus away from position raises a different set of questions: What can Ankara do? What enables it to do so? And which other actors does it depend on?

A practice that barely registers on an East–West axis may nevertheless alter what Turkey is able to do. For policy analysis, the relevant question is therefore not only where Ankara stands but also what it can affect, through which relationships and under what conditions.

Economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific has been the key driver of peace since 1952.

OPINION on the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2027 – all sections
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Matjaž Nemec

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

OPINION on the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2027 – all sections
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Matjaž Nemec

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

The old establishment elites have opposed Namal’s arrest. They want to preserve a system where one of their own is not jailed for corruption.

The peace process in the autonomous region will continue long after the votes have been counted and a new government formed.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 11 2026 (IPS)

When over 130 world leaders arrive in New York for the high-level segment of the General Assembly next week– it will be rare to hear hard-hitting, headline-grabbing political statements from the podium.

The speeches before the 193-member General Assembly, and UN press briefings that occasionally follow, are mostly long-winded and monotonously boring. The exceptions, however, are rare.

When Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi visited the UN in September 2009, a report in the London Guardian said he “grabbed his 15 minutes of fame at the UN building in New York and ran with it. He ran with it so hard he stretched it to an hour and 40 minutes, six times longer than his allotted slot, to the dismay of UN organizers”.

Gaddafi fully lived up to his reputation for eccentricity, bloody-mindedness and extreme verbiage, as he tore up a copy of the UN charter in front of startled delegates, accused the Security Council of being an al-Qaida like terrorist body, called for George Bush and Tony Blair to be put on trial for the Iraq war, demanded $7.7 trillion in compensation for the ravages of colonialism on Africa, and wondered whether swine flu was a biological weapon created in a military laboratory.

Incidentally, according to one news report, there were 112 different spellings of the Libyan leader’s name, both in English and Arabic, including Muammar el-Qaddafi, Muammar Gaddafi, Muammar al-Gathafi, Muammar El Kadhafi, Moammar el Kazzafi, Moamer, El Qathafi, Mu’Ammar, Gadafi, and Moamar Gaddafi, amongst others.

The Wall Street Journal ran a cartoon making fun of the multiple spellings, with a visiting reporter, on a one-on-one interview in Tripoli, told the Libyan leader: ”My editor sent me to find out whether you are Qaddafi, Khaddafi, Gadafi, Qathafi or Kadhafi?”

A memorable Soviet-US confrontation took place at the General Assembly hall in October 1960 during the height of the Cold War, but this time it was between the USSR and the Philippines, considered a close US ally at that time.

The Filipino delegate Lorenzo Sumulong, lashed out at the USSR, pointing out that “the peoples of Eastern Europe and elsewhere (under Soviet domination) have been deprived of the free exercise of their civil and political rights and which have been swallowed up, so to speak, by the Soviet Union”.

Incensed by the remark, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who was leading the Soviet delegation, hit back with a vengeance, describing the Filipino as “a jerk, a stooge, and a lackey”, and a “toady of American imperialism” –words that are rarely heard in the General Assembly or the Security Council these days. Forget the North Korean refrain: “Running Dogs of Imperialism”.

But an equally legendary story was the longstanding rumor that Khrushchev removed his shoe and kept banging on his desk, to be recognized, on a point of order.

The only evidence was a single photo in circulation, which was dismissed by some as a fake concocted by US intelligence – and that was long before the age of digital technology and photo-shopping.

The British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, who was at the podium, jokingly responded to the Soviet leader’s angry outbursts by famously asking the Speaker: “I should like that to be translated, if I may,’ amid loud laughter.

UN speeches are translated simultaneously into six of the UN’s official languages— Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish– but never the banging of shoes.

In another bygone era, Ugandan leader Idi Amin caused a stir when he tried to praise British Prime Minister Edward Heath. He told the assembly that Heath was just like Adolf Hitler—before quickly insisting he meant Winston Churchill.

And back in October 2006, the civilian government in Thailand was ousted when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was in New York to address the General Assembly. Instead of returning home, where he was likely to face charges of corruption, Thaksin opted to fly to London, where he was in virtual political exile.

The bloodless military coup against a democratically elected government in Thailand forced the United States to review its military relations and suspend aid to one of Washington’s long-standing political allies in Southeast Asia.

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which was seeking UN sanctions against the military government in neighboring Myanmar, said the Thai military coup was a “U-turn” for democracy in that politically stable region.

Still, the best guarantee for survival — for visiting world leaders during the General Assembly sessions– was to include all their military leaders, including the chiefs of the armed forces, the navy and the air force, in the country’s UN delegation so that they will be within sight at the General Assembly Hall – and not back home taking over the leadership of the country in military coups.

During the General Assembly sessions, the IPS office on the UN’s fourth floor was an occasional meeting place for representatives of liberation movements accredited to the UN, including the PLO and FRETILIN.

One regular visitor was Jose Ramos-Horta, designated as foreign minister in the government-in-exile set up by the liberation movement FRETILIN (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor). Winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize and later president of East Timor (2007-2012). Ramos-Horta, according to a widely circulated anecdote, was at a dinner in a restaurant frequented by delegates, in the UN neighborhood, where waiters politely asked guests from what country they were from.

When asked, he proudly claimed he was from East Timor, (a former Portuguese possession that was under Indonesian control from 1975 to 1999). “So, you are an Eskimo?”, said the waiter displaying his geographical ignorance. “’No, no, no,” replied Ramos-Horta: “I am not an Eskimo, I am from a country called East Timor.”

After he completed his first presidency in 2012, he was appointed as the United Nations‘ Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS) in January 2013. When I met him outside the UN on First Avenue, I double checked the anecdote— and he confirmed it did happen. And we laughed.

Meanwhile, a security officer once recalled an incident where the prime minister from an African country, addressing the General Assembly, was heckled by a group of African students. As is usual with hecklers, the boisterous group was taken off the visitor’s gallery, grilled, photographer and banned from entering the UN premises. But about five years later, one of the hecklers returned to the UN —this time, as foreign minister of his country, and addressed the world body.

Besides Qaddafi, some of the military leaders who addressed the UN included Fidel Castro of Cuba, Amadou Toure of Mali (who assumed power following a coup in 1991 but later served as a democratically elected President), and Jerry Rawlings of Ghana (who seized power in 1979, executed former heads of state but later served as a civilian president voted into power in democratic elections).

Although PLO leader Yasser Arafat made it to the UN, some of the world’s most controversial leaders, including Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Syria’s Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar al-Assad, and North Korea’s Kim il Sung and his grandson Kim Jong-un never made it to the UN.

When the politically-charismatic Ernesto Che Guevara, once second-in-command to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was at the United Nations to address the General Assembly sessions back in 1964, the U.N. headquarters came under attack – literally. The speech by the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary was momentarily drowned by the sound of an explosion.

The anti-Castro forces in the United States, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had mounted an insidious campaign to stop Che Guevara from speaking. A 3.5-inch bazooka was fired at the 39-storeyed Secretariat building by the East River while a vociferous CIA-inspired anti-Castro, anti-Che Guevara demonstration was taking place outside the U.N. building on New York’s First Avenue and 42nd street.

But the rocket launcher – which was apparently not as sophisticated as today’s shoulder-fired missiles and rocket-propelled grenades – missed its target, rattled windows, and fell into the river about 200 yards from the building. One newspaper report described it as “one of the wildest episodes since the United Nations moved into its East River headquarters in 1952.”

As longtime U.N. staffers would recall, the failed 1964 bombing of the U.N. building took place when Che Guevara launched a blistering attack on U.S. foreign policy and denounced a proposed de-nuclearization pact for the Western hemisphere.

It was one of the first known politically motivated terrorist attacks on the United Nations. After his Assembly speech, Che Guevara was asked about the attack aimed at him. “The explosion has given the whole thing more flavor,” he joked, as he chomped on his Cuban cigar.

When he was told by a reporter that the New York City police had nabbed a woman, described as an anti-Castro Cuban exile, who had pulled out a hunting knife and jumped over the UN wall, intending to kill him, Che Guevara said: “It is better to be killed by a woman with a knife than by a man with a gun.”

This article contains excerpts from a book on the United Nations titled “No Comment—and Don’t Quote Me on That,” authored by Thalif Deen, Senior Editor at Inter Press Service news agency. A former member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the General Assembly sessions, he is a Fulbright scholar with a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, New York, and twice (2012-2013) shared the gold medal for excellence in UN reporting awarded annually by the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA). The book is available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.amazon.com/No-Comment-dont-quote-that/dp/064811838X

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

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