Tracking Latin America at the 79th UN General Assembly

On September 25, Colombia became the 25th country to ratify the Escazú Agreement, a regional environmental treaty. The document, first signed in 2018, guarantees universal access to environmental data and promotes public participation in environmental decision making. It also pushes governments to do more to protect environmental defenders and advocates. President Gustavo Petro formally presented the ratified document to UNGA. 

President of Panama José Raúl Mulino’s first speech at the UNGA focused heavily on the migration crisis in the Darien Gap, the rainforest that sits on the border between his country and Colombia. In 2023, over half a million migrants, equivalent to 12 percent of Panama’s population, entered the country through Darien. He called Panama the “new border of the United States.”

On September 24, Mulino met with Colombian President Gustavo Petro in New York to discuss the idea of building an organized migration route through the Darien Gap. Petro told the press that the route would be “legal and controlled by both governments” and would deter migrants from “falling into the hands of mafias.”  

In his UNGA speech, Mulino also spoke against Panama’s continued inclusion on lists of countries that are considered to not practice good governance on taxation. Mulino announced Panama will not allow companies from countries that endorse these “unfair discriminatory lists,” as he put it, to participate in its international tenders. He also said Panama will not support these countries in international organizations. The country is set to start a two-year term as a member of the 15-seat UN Security Council in 2025.

On September 25, regional leaders, led by U.S. Secretary of States Antony Blinken and Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo, met on the sidelines of UNGA for a ministerial meeting on the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, the product of the 9th Summit of the Americas, which took place in June 2022 in the eponymous city.

At the meeting, Blinken announced new commitments of $685 million from the U.S. government to help countries in the region manage migration flows. Of that, $228 million will go to providing food assistance for Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. This brings total U.S. commitments to the declaration to $1.2 billion.

Colombia will serve as the chair of the Declaration in 2025, the first country to assume this role. At the meeting, Blinken also announced that the secretariat for the Declaration will be co-hosted in the Organization of American States and the Pan American Development Foundation.

At UNGA, I joined leaders from across the Americas to drive forward our collective efforts to respond to irregular migration and forced displacement. Together, we can address the unprecedented level of migration in our hemisphere and advance the goals of the LA Declaration. pic.twitter.com/dsY4uSH2Wk

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) September 25, 2024

On September 24, the night before his first speech at the UNGA, Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa announced that he was canceling his agenda in New York City and returning to Quito, where a wildfire has been raging since Tuesday. 

“We are experiencing the worst climate situation in decades, which requires urgent decisions at all levels of government,” he wrote on X.

He cancelado la agenda que tenía que cumplir como mandatario en la ONU. Quito nos necesita a todos. Regreso para comandar todos los esfuerzos ante el enemigo al que nos enfrentamos.

Vivimos la peor coyuntura climática en décadas, lo que amerita decisiones urgentes a todos los…

— Daniel Noboa Azin (@DanielNoboaOk) September 25, 2024

The threat of extreme weather events was present in the speeches of other leaders. “The Amazon is facing its worst drought in 45 years,” said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in his speech. “Forest fires have spread across the country and already devoured 5 million hectares in August alone.” 
 

To varying degrees, leaders across the hemisphere have pronounced their discontent about the tense political context in Venezuela and its impact on the region. Presidents across the political spectrum, including Argentina’s Javier Milei, Chile’s Gabriel Boric, and Paraguay’s Santiago Peña denounced the lack of transparency in the election results and the ensuing repression by the Maduro administration. Panama’s José Raúl Mulino also denounced the situation in Venezuela and spoke about the environmental impact of the large number of Venezuelan migrants who pass through the Darien Gap. 

However, neither President Lula of Brazil nor President Gustavo Petro of Colombia commented on the ongoing fallout from Venezuela’s July 28 election. Both leaders have made attempts to negotiate a resolution to the electoral impasse.

Boric, whose time in office has seen increased security along Chile’s northern border in a bid to stem migration flows, declared that “Chile is not in a position to receive more migrants” in his address to UNGA. About 700,000 Venezuelans currently reside in the country. Boric criticized U.S. sanctions on the Maduro regime, saying that they only worsened the situation and “hit the Venezuelan people more than its current leaders.” 

Two of Latin America’s most outspoken leaders—Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele—delivered back-to-back addresses on the first day of the UNGA debate. Both leaders emphasized the importance of freedom to the world and pointed to their countries as global examples.

Milei, in his first speech to the global body, condemned the organization's “long list of errors and contradictions.” He explained his decision earlier in the week for Argentina to not sign the “Pact for the Future,” calling the document a “supranational government program that is socialist in shape.” Instead, he urged countries to follow an “agenda for freedom” and criticized the left. “They design a model according to what human beings should do, and when things turn out differently, they repress, restrict and curtail their freedom,” he said.

Bukele focused similarly on what he saw as a global decline in freedom, saying, “The free world is no longer free.” The Salvadoran president detailed how his country has changed since he took office in 2019 and defended his controversial ‘state of exception’ that has seen 80,000 citizens arrested over a period of two years. “Some people say that we are the country that has imprisoned thousands, but actually we’ve freed millions,” he said. 
 

Starting with a line in Kʼicheʼ, a Mayan language, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo opened his first address to the UNGA with a speech focused on unity and democracy. Of particular focus for the president was corruption, which he called “an anchor that stops us in the past, prevents us from growing and building a society based on the common good.”

Since winning office on an anti-corruption message, Arévalo has attempted to clean up the country’s governance. This has included thus far unsuccessful efforts to remove Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who was appointed by his predecessor, from office. Currently, Arévalo is making a push to weed out corruption in Guatemala’s judiciary and Congress is currently in the process of electing new judges. 

Over the two days preceding the plenary session of the General Assembly, the leaders of UN member states gathered for the “Summit of the Future,” which aimed to revamp guidelines for global governance. The summit culminated in the adoption of the “Pact for the Future,” a document that calls on governments to renew commitments on a vast range of issues, including climate protections, gender equality, and nuclear disarmament. 

The Pact advocated for a reform of multilateral institutions—particularly the UN Security Council and international lending agencies—to increase Global South representation and empower enforcement mechanisms.  It also included a Global Digital Compact that offers a framework for the regulation of artificial intelligence.

A Russian-led attempt to introduce amendments that would limit the scope of UN obligations or actions in countries’ "domestic affairs” threatened to derail the approval of the Pact by consensus. Nicaragua supported the efforts. However, Mexico joined with a bloc of 54 African countries, represented by the Republic of Congo, to prevent these amendments. 

Though the Pact passed, President Lula of Brazil said in his opening address to UNGA, “It’s difficult approval shows the weakening of our collective capacity for negotiation and dialogue.” Argentina’s Foreign Minister Diana Mondino announced that her country does not support the Pact.

Hoy en la ONU nos disociamos del Pacto del Futuro.

Elegimos un mundo mejor para cada uno de los niños, hombres y mujeres que habita nuestro suelo.

Argentina quiere tener alas para su desarrollo, sin estar sujeto a un peso indebido de decisiones ajenas a nuestras metas.…

— Diana Mondino (@DianaMondino) September 23, 2024

It’s been almost one year since the United Nations Security Council approved a Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to Haiti. In June and July, a force of about 400 Kenyan police officers arrived in Port-au-Prince, which faces high rates of gang violence. On September 30, the Security Council extended that MSS mission one additional year.

Several countries, including The Bahamas, Benin, Chad, and Jamaica, have said they will contribute troops to the Kenya-led MSS mission, with 2,500 total pledged. President Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic, which shares an island with Haiti, called on countries to fulfill this commitment, noting the need to improve Haiti’s current security situation in order to facilitate long-awaited elections that are planned for February 2026.

However, efforts to transition the MSS mission into a full UN peacekeeping mission, an intention supported by Kenyan President William Ruto, did not succeed. It was reported that Security Council members the United States and Ecuador intended to include such language in their resolution on Haiti, but dropped the idea to avoid possible vetoes from China and Russia, which both highlighted issues with previous peacekeeping missions in the Caribbean country. 

Before the start of the General Assembly debates, two Latin American delegations participated in events to shore up confidence in their macroeconomic foundations.

On September 22, President Milei spoke at the New York Stock Exchange where he announced his intention to abandon the currency controls currently in place on the Argentine Peso. That will happen, he said, when inflation reaches zero.

That same day, Brazilian President Lula and Finance Minister Fernando Haddad met with New York-based international credit agencies to state their case for Brazil’s upgrade to an investment grade. Haddad highlighted the government’s budgetary discipline as well as Brazil’s role as an international creditor and a popular destination for foreign investment.