Every year, when a new session of the General Assembly opens in September, the UN becomes a focus of global attention as Heads of State stand before the world body to declare their government’s perspective on current issues.

This year’s high-level events began with the all-important SDG Summit – an attempt to generate political leadership from governments to “recharge momentum” and “accelerate actions” designed to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The need is great as the promise and hope embodied in the Goals is “in deep peril.“ After some progress in the early years of the Goals, multiple global crises have reversed progress in key areas and today only 15% of the Goals’ targets are on track to be achieved by 2030.

Polarization has become a popular topic of debate around the globe. The word is often used when discussing societal division into two significantly distinct opposites. It can also be evidenced in the predominant ‘us vs. them’ attitude among individuals and larger groups in society. However, if we use a broader perspective to understand what drives societal polarization, we find that rather than an impetus for separation, polarization is underlaid by an intrinsic human need for belonging. When this sense of belonging is fulfilled and the individual becomes properly socialized into its communal groups, this polarization then must shift higher if ever the individual is to attain to a truly inclusive group identity, based on the intrinsic value of all groups as integral parts of the One Humanity.

In 2009, the United Nations General Assembly designated 22 April as International Mother Earth Day.[i] For almost forty years this date had been widely observed throughout the world as Earth Day, and the UN Declaration confirmed that global awareness about the need for a new relationship between humanity and the Earth was becoming a core issue in international affairs.  

Last month in New York City, the United Nations held its 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. The event was the first in 3 years due to the pandemic restrictions, and judging by the crowds circulating throughout the UN, was extremely well attended. From our offices at Lucis Trust New York we watch hundreds of people a day come and go from the United Nations building, but on the opening day of this Commission the line to enter the building was the longest we had ever noticed.

The work of mobilizing goodwill energies in humanity and organizing these energies in ways that contribute to the building of right relations has been a part of human history for centuries. Yet it is only in the 78 years since the founding of the United Nations that this work has really begun to emerge as a concentrated global dynamic; and only in the past four decades or so that it has become an organized force for good.