Maldives FM elected new UNGA president

The foreign minister of the Maldives, Abdulla Shahid, was on Monday elected the president of the upcoming 76th session of the UN General Assembly, reported Xinhua.

He was elected by secret ballot in which he defeated his challenger, former Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul. Shahid won the support of 143 of the 191 UN member states present and voting. Rassoul won 48 votes. A candidate needs at least 96 votes to get elected.

Shahid promised "a presidency of hope" in his campaign. In his speech to a General Assembly plenary session after his election on Monday, Shahid said his first priority as president of the General Assembly will be recovery from COVID-19.

"I will be looking to address the health of our people and our economies and work to ensure vaccine equity. We need to vaccinate the entire world. No one is safe until everyone is safe," he told the General Assembly.

"We need to rebuild sustainably. Our decade of action (for sustainable development) will now also have to be a decade of recovery, focusing on building back better, building back stronger, and building back greener and bluer," he said.

Shahid also promised to tackle challenges such as climate change, ocean decay, biodiversity loss; to respect the rights of all people; and to revitalize the United Nations to make it transparent, efficient, effective, and accountable.

"We approached the 76th session in challenging times. Disease, despair and devastation have characterized the past year. Inequality, injustice and instability have increased. The environment, the ocean, our planet is suffering. But we need to get moving again: rebuild communities, rescue the planet, recover economies, about all, restore hope. We need to move to a different normal," he said.

Shahid will assume his duties as General Assembly president in September 2021. He will replace Volkan Bozkir of Turkey.

Shahid, 59, has been the Maldives' foreign minister since 2018. He first held the post in 2007-2008. Between 2009 and 2014, he was the speaker of the unicameral house of parliament. He was educated in Australia and the United States and holds a master's degree in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University.

Shahid is married with three children.