Source: United Nations (video statements)
The President of the General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, said, “we meet in challenging times, but if our predecessors could emerge from devastation with the resolve to chart a better path forward, how can we credibly argue that we are incapable of doing the same?”
Baerbock said, “we need to summon the same resolve found by the delegates in this Hall eighty years ago, to form a cross-regional alliance to defend our international rules-based order and the Charter every single day.”
She said, “how many blows can an international order, can our United Nations endure? Or can any country truly sleep in peace if we simply accept that more and more Member States, including some Permanent Members of the Security Council, violate the Charter’s core principles? When compromise shifts from mutual accommodation to the slow erosion, or the deliberate dismantling of the very foundations of this institution, it is no longer a compromise but compromising.”
At the beginning of 2026, the PGA said, “we are not only standing at a crossroads, but history will show whether we find the same courage and determination as our founding fathers and our founding mothers did 80 years ago.”
Organised by the United Nations Association-UK, Saturday’s anniversary event gathered over 1,000 delegates from across the world. The event also marks the 80th anniversary of the first UN Security Council, which took place on 17 January 1946 at nearby Church House.