The 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly is drawing to a close, and the air in New York is thick with familiar phrases. World leaders have stood at the podium, one after another, urging diplomatic solutions to the conflicts that continue to tear apart Ukraine and the Middle East. They have invoked multilateralism, humanitarian aid, and global security as though these words alone could mend what has been broken. But as the delegates pack their briefcases and head for the airports, I cannot shake the feeling that we have been here before. The calls for peace ring out, but the bombs keep falling, and the people who suffer most are the ones who never get a seat at that grand table.

It is easy to dismiss the UN General Assembly as a talking shop, a place where the powerful go to perform concern while the machinery of war grinds on. There is some truth to that cynicism, but it is not the whole story. The General Assembly is also one of the few forums where every nation, regardless of size or wealth, gets a voice. That matters. It matters that representatives from small island states and landlocked nations can stand before the world and name the crises that others would rather ignore. But a voice is not the same as power. And the gap between the two is where ordinary people get lost.

Take the conflict in Ukraine. The leaders gathered in New York have again called for a diplomatic solution, for negotiations, for an end to Russia's invasion. These are noble sentiments, and I do not doubt the sincerity of many who spoke them. But sincerity does not stop a missile. It does not restore a home or bring back a loved one. The people of Ukraine have now lived through years of war, displacement, and uncertainty. They have watched their cities become battlefields and their fields become minefields. And what have they heard from the world's leaders? Words. Plenty of words. But the words are not matched by the kind of decisive, coordinated action that might actually change the calculus of those who hold the power to end this war.

The same can be said for the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The General Assembly has heard passionate appeals for a ceasefire, for the protection of civilians, for humanitarian corridors. These are necessary demands, and they reflect the conscience of a world that cannot look away from the images of death and destruction in Gaza. But again, the gap between rhetoric and reality is vast. The people of Gaza are living through an unimaginable catastrophe. They are running out of food, water, and medicine. They are burying their children in mass graves. They are being told that the world cares, but their daily lives suggest otherwise. And the leaders who speak so eloquently about peace seem unwilling or unable to compel the parties to stop.

I think about the concept of multilateralism, which was a recurring theme at this session. Multilateralism is supposed to be the idea that nations work together to solve shared problems, that no single country can or should act alone. It is a beautiful idea, and it has produced some genuine achievements over the decades. But it is also a system that is rigged in favor of the powerful. The permanent members of the Security Council hold veto power, which means that any one of them can block action that threatens their interests. That is not multilateralism; that is a hierarchy dressed up in diplomatic clothing. When Russia vetoes a resolution on Ukraine, or the United States vetoes a resolution on Gaza, we are not seeing the failure of multilateralism. We are seeing its limits, and those limits are drawn by power.

And who bears the cost of those limits? Not the leaders who make the decisions. They fly home in private jets, to their secure compounds, to their comfortable lives. The cost is borne by the civilians who are caught in the crossfire. It is borne by the families who have to decide whether to risk their lives to flee or to stay and hope. It is borne by the children who will grow up knowing nothing but war, who will inherit a world that has been shaped by violence and neglect. The General Assembly's calls for peace are meant to address these realities, but they too often feel like a distant echo, a sound that never quite reaches the ground.

There is also the question of humanitarian aid. The leaders at the UNGA have emphasized the importance of getting aid to those who need it. But aid is not a substitute for justice. It is a band-aid on a wound that is still bleeding. And even the band-aid is often delayed, restricted, or weaponized by the very powers that claim to want peace. We saw this during the pandemic, when wealthy nations hoarded vaccines while poorer countries waited. We see it now, when aid convoys are blocked at borders and hospitals are bombed. The language of humanitarianism can be a cover for inaction, a way of saying we care without actually having to change anything.

I want to talk about the economic cost of these conflicts, because that is where my labor and equity lens comes into play. War is not just a moral tragedy; it is an economic disaster that hits the most vulnerable hardest. The money spent on weapons and military operations is money that could have gone to schools, hospitals, housing, and jobs. The resources diverted to war are resources stolen from the future. And when the fighting finally ends, it is the working class who are left to rebuild, often without the support they need. The people who profited from the war, the arms dealers and the oligarchs, they move on to the next profitable crisis. The rest of us are left with the rubble.

This is why I am skeptical of the way the General Assembly talks about global security. Security for whom? For the states that have the most weapons? For the corporations that supply them? Or for the people who are supposed to be protected? True security is not about borders and missiles. It is about having a roof over your head, food on the table, and a future for your children. It is about being able to live without fear of violence, whether that violence comes from a foreign army or a domestic police force. The leaders who speak of security at the UNGA rarely define it that way. They speak of national interests and strategic alliances, as if the lives of ordinary people were just pieces on a chessboard.

There is a deep irony in the fact that the UN General Assembly, which is supposed to be the world's parliament, is so often powerless to act. The United Nations was founded in the aftermath of World War II, with the promise that never again would the world allow such devastation. But that promise has been broken again and again, in Korea, Vietnam, Rwanda, the Balkans, and now in Ukraine and the Middle East. The institution itself is not the problem; the problem is the lack of political will among the nations that hold the most power. They have created a system that allows them to veto any action that might inconvenience them, and then they blame the system for its failures. It is a convenient excuse, but it does not fool the people who are dying.

And yet, despite all of this, I do not want to write off the United Nations entirely. There are moments when it has made a difference. There are peacekeeping missions that have saved lives, humanitarian agencies that have delivered aid against all odds, and international courts that have held some perpetrators accountable. These are not trivial achievements. They are the result of people who believe in the possibility of a better world, who work within the system to push it toward justice. The General Assembly is also a space where smaller nations can form coalitions and amplify their voices. The Global South has used this forum to challenge the dominance of the West, to demand a fairer economic order, and to highlight the climate crisis. That is not nothing.

But those efforts are constantly undermined by the double standards of the powerful. The same countries that preach democracy and human rights at the UN are often the ones arming the parties to conflicts, selling weapons to dictators, and propping up regimes that brutalize their own people. The United States, Russia, China, and the European powers all have blood on their hands, and they all use the UN as a stage to perform their virtue. This is not to say that all countries are equally culpable, but it is to say that the moral authority of the UN is compromised when its most powerful members are also the biggest arms dealers and the most frequent veto-wielders.

So what is to be done? I wish I had a simple answer, but I don't. The problems we face are complex, and they require more than just good intentions. We need a radical reordering of priorities, a shift away from the logic of war and toward the logic of care. That means investing in diplomacy, not just in the form of high-level summits, but in the hard, unglamorous work of building trust and addressing grievances. It means supporting civil society organizations that are doing the work on the ground, rather than treating them as obstacles to be managed. It means holding our own leaders accountable for the consequences of their foreign policies, and demanding that they put people before profits.

I also think we need to expand our imagination about what peace looks like. Peace is not just the absence of war; it is the presence of justice. It is a world where everyone has access to healthcare, education, and a decent job. It is a world where we treat the earth and its resources as a common inheritance, not as spoils to be divided among the powerful. The leaders at the UN General Assembly talk about peace as though it were a product to be negotiated, but it is actually a process to be lived. And that process starts with ordinary people, in their communities, demanding that their voices be heard.

I remember a story I once heard about a woman in a conflict zone who was asked what she wanted. She didn't ask for weapons or for revenge. She asked for water, for bread, for a school for her children. Those are the things that matter. And those are the things that are too often forgotten in the grand debates at the UN. The diplomats speak of security and sovereignty, but the woman in the bombed-out street is speaking of survival and dignity. Until we can hear her voice, until we can put her needs at the center of our politics, all the resolutions and all the statements will be just so much paper.

As the 80th session of the General Assembly comes to a close, I find myself both hopeful and discouraged. Hopeful because there are people in that building who genuinely want to make a difference, and discouraged because the structures they work within are so resistant to change. But I take comfort in the fact that change is never initiated by the powerful; it is always pushed from below. The civil rights movement, the anti-apartheid movement, the labor movement, the climate movement - all of these were driven by ordinary people who refused to accept the world as it was. The UN can be a tool for that change, but it cannot be the engine. The engine is us.

So let us not be fooled by the rhetoric of peace that echoes through the halls of power. Let us look instead at what is actually being done, and what is not being done. Let us ask who is profiting from the wars, and who is paying for them. Let us demand that our leaders live up to the promises they make on the world stage, and let us hold them accountable when they fail. And let us never forget that the true measure of our humanity is not how we treat the powerful, but how we treat the powerless. The people of Ukraine and Gaza, and all those suffering in conflicts around the world, are watching. They are waiting. And they deserve more than words.