EQUALITY IS A DECISION - UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY 2026
**Equality Is a Decision: What I Heard in the UN General Assembly Hall This Week**
*Representing the Cosmos Ndukwe Foundation at UNGA81*
The United Nations named its own test this week: deliver for all, or lose the trust of the people it serves. From where I sat in the General Assembly Hall, one conclusion was clear. The delivery the world is asking for already happens every day in communities that global systems rarely reach, and civil society organizations are the proof.
**Seated Amongst World Leaders**
On Tuesday, 22 September, I represented the Cosmos Ndukwe Foundation as Executive Secretary in the General Assembly Hall for the opening of the General Debate of the 81st UN General Assembly. Our foundation returned to the Hall on Wednesday, 23 September, and will be present again on Saturday, 26 September.
The podium this week tells its own story about who shapes global decisions.
**Women leading their nations' delegations.** Heads of state and government on this year's speakers' list include:
- President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania
- President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Namibia
- Prime Minister Judith Suminwa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Vice-President Jessica Alupo, Uganda
- Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Barbados
- Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Trinidad and Tobago
- President Sylvanie Burton, Dominica
- President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, Suriname
- President Keiko Fujimori, Peru
- Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Japan
- President Iliana Iotova, Bulgaria
- President Hilda Heine, Marshall Islands
Women foreign ministers also lead delegations, including Benin's Corinne Amori Brunet, Gabon's Marie-Édith Tassyla-Ye-Doumbeneny, and Jamaica's Kamina Johnson Smith.
**Africa at the podium.** Fifty-three African delegations are on the speakers' list. Heads of state, heads of government, and vice presidents are speaking for Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Senegal, Tanzania, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Angola, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, Côte d'Ivoire, Togo, Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Morocco, Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles, Cabo Verde, Lesotho, and Eswatini. Foreign ministers represent South Africa, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Djibouti, Eritrea, and Mauritius.
For our foundation, one name matters most: President Bola Tinubu speaking for Nigeria, the country where every one of our 19 bungalows stands.
The Cosmos Ndukwe Foundation holds special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council. That status gives our work in rural Nigeria a seat in global conversations, and a responsibility to bring what we hear back home.
This session carries the theme "Restoring trust, managing transformation: A United Nations that delivers for all," chosen by General Assembly President Khalilur Rahman. Secretary-General António Guterres opened the debate with a stark diagnosis: "Cracks have become canyons." Three takeaways stood out.
**1. Inequality is a choice, and so is closing it**
Guterres framed the world's crises through four tests of power: war or peace, inequality, climate change, and artificial intelligence. On inequality, he contrasted record global wealth with the billions still without food, clean water, education, and healthcare, and described inequality as a question of who controls opportunity and resources. He also announced that the UN has reached full gender parity across its senior leadership and staff for the first time, adding that "Equality is not a dream; it is a decision."
Our foundation made that decision long ago for the women most often left behind: widows. Through Project 50, we build and furnish decent bungalows for indigent widows in our villages and hinterlands. We have now completed 19 bungalows toward the first-phase goal of 50. At our annual Widows Party, selected widows also receive non-refundable loans to start or grow small businesses.
One widow told us that helping select a house recipient convinced her the program was real and non-political. That is how trust is rebuilt: transparent process, visible results, one home at a time.
**2. Development rights are realized where people live**
Guterres argued that the international financial system leaves developing nations crushed by debt, and called for faster debt relief, bolder development banks, and fairer access to IMF Special Drawing Rights. On Wednesday, the day our foundation returned to the Assembly, the UN also held high-level meetings on climate action and the just transition and on the 40th anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development.
Global finance reform matters. Rights, however, become real at the village level. Our foundation built and donated a modern maternity center to the women of Okoko Item, pays exam registration fees for indigent students in rural public schools, and supplies motorcycles to young farmers in Bende LGA so they can reach their farmland and markets. Our undergraduate scholarship grants go directly to institutions to cover tuition and books, so every naira reaches its purpose.
**3. A UN that delivers needs Africa and civil society at the table**
Guterres renewed calls for Security Council reform, calling the continued absence of permanent African representation unjust and indefensible. He closed by insisting the world needs a stronger United Nations, not a weaker one.
Fifty-three African delegations took their place on the speakers' list this week. African voices belong in global decisions at every level, from the Security Council to the community hall. Governments set frameworks. Organizations like ours turn them into outcomes for families in Abia State and beyond.
**What comes next**
We return to the General Assembly Hall on Saturday to continue this work. The Cosmos Ndukwe Foundation will use its consultative status to carry the realities of rural Nigeria into global conversations on the Sustainable Development Goals, and to bring global partnerships home.
Nineteen bungalows are complete. Thirty-one widows are still waiting for theirs. If your government office, foundation, company, or network works on housing, maternal health, education, or women's economic empowerment, I would welcome a conversation.
Equality is a decision. Let us make it together.
*Bashirah Okeh is Chief Administrative Officer of the Cosmos Ndukwe Foundation, an NGO in special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council since 2021.*
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