Afrasianet - The United Nations General Assembly has adopted the "Charter of the Future", which urges leaders of member states to work to improve conditions in the fight against climate change, poverty, conflict escalation prevention, and more.

The charter was adopted on Sunday at the opening of the two-day "Summit of the Future", convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Addressing representatives of UN member states, Guterres said: "We are here to restore multilateralism... Now this is our common destiny to go through. This requires not only agreement, but action."

Guterres thanked diplomats for taking the first steps towards "opening the door" to a better future.

The Secretary-General urged world leaders to implement the Charter, provide dialogue and negotiation, end "wars tearing the world apart" from the Middle East to Ukraine and Sudan, and reform the UN Security Council and the international financial system.

It should be noted that Russia criticized the charter, and the Russian representative at the meeting, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin, proposed a number of amendments to it, but the General Assembly did not support them.

Russia's deputy representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, called the charter "unbalanced" and "contains dangerous provisions that will backfire and undermine the multilateralism of the UN," dealing "a heavy blow to the organization in general."

Dmitry Polyansky, Russia's deputy permanent representative to the UN, stressed that the "Charter of the Future" adopted by the UN summit is unbalanced, contains dangerous provisions and is a blow to the world body.

Polyansky wrote on his X account: "Unfortunately, there is nothing remarkable about the fact that today the United Nations has adopted the 'Charter of the Future'. The UN trampled on its own principles in order to appease a group of "beautiful garden" delegations (an expression used by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to describe the West, surrounded by jungle) who usurped the negotiations from the start, but the majority of the "jungle", like the herd, simply did not have the courage to protest and defend their rights, and they would bear the responsibility and the consequences.

According to the Russian diplomat, "the Charter is unbalanced and contains very serious clauses that will have the opposite effect and undermine the multilateralism and intergovernmental nature of the United Nations, which is upheld by the Charter of the United Nations," stressing that "this is a strong blow to the Organization as a whole."

"As a result of the inclusive negotiation process, the natural understanding of this term has not been reached," Polyansky noted, adding: "The new president of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly [Cameroonian Philemon Yang] tried to rectify the situation, but missed the train."

At the "Summit of the Future" launched at the United Nations, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin noted that the text presented in violation of the procedure did not have the support of some delegations, and the Russian diplomat suggested that Yang postpone the adoption of the document until all its terms were agreed.

The amendment submitted by Russia was not accepted, so Vershinin noted that the Russian Federation distances itself from the consensus on the "Charter of the Future" and the "Universal Digital Compact", stressing that this relates in particular to provisions on disarmament and issues of participation of non-governmental organizations in the work of the United Nations and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The "Summit for the Future" will take place from 22 to 23 September at United Nations Headquarters in New York, ahead of the policy debate of the seventy-ninth session of the General Assembly.

The main objective of the summit is to discuss global challenges and develop collective solutions by world leaders, experts and civil society, and despite the declared importance of the summit, the permanent members of the Security Council do not participate at the level of heads of state and government.