Last week the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly got underway in New York as leaders from the 193 member states took their turn at the rostrum to deliver their reflections on the state of the world. Given all the ills that plague humanity, the mood on these occasions is rarely cheerful. Yet this year that mood was particularly gloomy. The war in Ukraine with all its global repercussions and which dominated proceedings at last year’s General Assembly drags on, with no end in sight but thousands more killed. New conflicts have broken out in the meantime, notably in Sudan where fighting between two rival military factions has led to the deaths of over 7,000 civilians and 5mn people have been displaced, many seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad and adding to the 60mn refugees and displaced people already in the world today. As the General Assembly began, another long-simmering conflict flared up, this time in the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh as a new offensive by Azerbaijan, following on from the previous one in 2020, resulted in Baku gaining full control over the region. This led to fears of the ethnic cleansing of the 120,000 remaining Karabakh Armenians. Over 60,000 have departed voluntarily already. Baku countered by promising to uphold the human rights of its new Armenian minority and to stop blocking much-needed humanitarian assistance. Yet Armenia, increasingly critical of the passivity of the Russian peacekeeping force in Nagorno Karabakh, demanded the immediate dispatch of a UN observer mission, thereby putting yet another intractable conflict on the already overloaded UN agenda. The UN already has its hands full trying to put together a multinational police force under Kenyan leadership to go to lawless and gang-ridden Haiti.