President Ranil Wickremesinghe is scheduled to leave the country on September 13 to attend the 78th Annual Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which will begin in New York on September 19, and the G77 Summit, which will be held in Havana, Cuba on September 15 and 16.
The President, who will visit Cuba first, will participate in the G77 Summit in Havana on September 15 and 16. After that, the President will go to New York to join the 78th Annual session of the United Nations General Assembly beginning on September 19 and will address the event on September 21. In Havana as well as in New York, the President will hold official level discussions with many world leaders who will participate in those conferences.
The theme of this year’s UN General Assembly session is ‘Financing for Development’, which aims to assist developing countries to recover from the post-Covid economic crisis and finance the challenges of climate change.
The G77 has 134 member countries from the economically developing world and is a branch of the Non-Aligned Movement, which started in 1964 with 77 countries including Sri Lanka.
This year’s theme of the conference is ‘North-South Digital Divide’ which describes global disparities between economically developed countries and G77 member countries.
Cuba, the current chair of the G77, will handover the leadership to Uganda after this year’s summit.