Despite requests from non-governmental organizations for him to attend a meeting to promote sustainable development, Rishi Sunak is set to be the first sitting UK prime minister in ten years to miss the UN General Assembly.
At the yearly summit of world leaders in September in New York, the British delegation will be led by deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden & Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, according to Downing Street.
The Prime Minister will meet with counterpart at the G20 leaders’ conference in New Delhi, India, on Sept 9 and 10, as well as the Cop28 the United Nations climate summit later in Dubai in November, according to a spokesperson for No. 10.
A current British prime minister rarely skips the UN’s known as high-level general debate.
Liz Truss, a brief-lived former prime minister, was one of Mr. Sunak’s predecessors who had time to fly to New York to give speeches on the international arena.
David Cameron, the most recent British leader to cancel, did so in 2013.
In a letter to Mr. Sunak, more than a hundred leaders in the humanitarian and development sectors urged him to attend the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDG, summit, the centerpiece of this year’s UN conference.
The global initiative to better the earth and human life quality has a deadline of 2030, and the once each four years SDG summit occurs at this point.
The NGO leaders encouraged the Prime Minister in a letter sent on Friday to “walk by talking and show initiative by putting these commitments into action” in order to “rebuild the United Kingdom’s credibility as a trustworthy ally to nations with lower incomes and global actors”
Britain appears to have “stepped back from leading on globally agreed goals,” according to Stephanie Draper, CEO of Bond, a UK-based network for global development organizations.
“The forthcoming UN SDG Conference is a chance for the prime minister to show initiative on the world stage and restore Britain’s image as a trustworthy ally to nations with lower incomes, and this needs to be there as a starting point,” she added.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary for Labour, stated early this month that Mr. Sunak’s absence from the UN General Assembly “would represent the lowest point of the Conservatives’ isolationist foreign policy”.
After receiving criticism for saying he wouldn’t attend Cop27 in Egypt the previous year, the prime minister ultimately made the decision to attend.
The deputy prime minister will lead the UK team at the United Nations General Assembly’s High Level Week, along with the Foreign Secretary as well as others, according to a No. 10 spokesperson.
In the upcoming weeks, the Prime Minister is anticipated to have conversations with a number of foreign leaders, notably at the Cop28 Conference in the UAE and the G20 meeting in New Delhi, India.