Bangladesh at UNGA 2024: Glitter, gold, and ground reality

October 3, 2024

DHAKA – When I first heard of the 2024 United Nations General Assembly theme, the picture of Abu Sayeed’s final action in Rangpur flashed through my mind. The theme is simply “Leaving no one behind.” It requires “acting together for the advancement of peace, sustainable development and human dignity for present and future generations.” Bangladesh Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus befittingly completed that picture.

Historians may characterise Yunus’s visit as the second most auspicious moment for the country in this august body. Entrusted with the duty to execute and institutionalise widespread reforms to essentially rebuild Bangladesh, Prof Yunus’s presence rekindled the first Bangladeshi presence: when the country was admitted in 1974. At that time, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared “Friendship to all, malice to none” as the country’s foreign policy orientation. At no other time has Bangladesh needed that approach more than right now.
Yunus made Upper Manhattan East Riverside glitter last week. US President Joe Biden dropped out of the US presidential election in July because vox populi thought him to be too old, but Yunus put the youth back in him. As the chirpier, younger octogenarian, Biden canoodled Yunus. Interestingly, the World Bank was doing the same to Bangladesh, first with economical support, then by opening legal windows to recuperate money looted by disgraced businessmen and former ministers and parliamentarians. Unsurprisingly, the IMF loan package window also widened.

That was not all. From the north of New York, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau exuberantly sought deeper bilateral relations, and from the south of the US, Brazil’s avowed socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula