By Naeema Saleem — SCN NEWS
NEW YORK — Bangladesh has returned to the presidency of the United Nations General Assembly exactly four decades after one of its most prominent diplomats last occupied the chair, placing the South Asian country at the centre of the UN's most representative body during a year expected to test the institution's ability to manage wars, development setbacks, technological disruption and a transition in its top leadership.
Bangladesh's Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman formally assumed the presidency when the 81st session opened on September 8. His arrival carries historical significance for Dhaka: Humayun Rasheed Choudhury, then Bangladesh's foreign minister, was elected president of the 41st General Assembly session in 1986. UN records confirm Rahman is therefore the first Bangladeshi to hold the office in 40 years.
But what does holding the presidency actually mean?
The President of the General Assembly, commonly known as the PGA, presides over the 193-member Assembly, where every UN member state has one vote. Unlike the UN Secretary-General, the president does not run the United Nations bureaucracy, and unlike the Security Council, the General Assembly generally cannot impose legally binding decisions on states. The presidency's influence instead comes from controlling and facilitating one of the world's largest diplomatic forums: guiding debates, managing negotiations, convening meetings, building consensus and representing the Assembly during a one-year term.
That distinction is important when assessing what Bangladesh has gained. Dhaka has not acquired an additional national vote or veto power. Rahman is expected to serve the entire membership rather than act as Bangladesh's representative. He made that point explicit after his election, pledging to engage all member states and seek common ground without ignoring their differences.
The route to the presidency also explains why Rahman's victory carried diplomatic significance. The presidency rotates among five UN regional groups, with the 81st session allocated to the Asia-Pacific Group. But Bangladesh did not simply inherit the office uncontested. Rahman faced Andreas Kakouris of Cyprus in a secret ballot on June 2 and won 99 votes to 91, with 190 ballots cast and no abstentions or invalid votes. The narrow eight-vote margin turned what can sometimes be a consensus selection into an unusually competitive diplomatic contest.
The comparison with 1986 also reveals how dramatically the environment surrounding Bangladesh's second presidency has changed. Choudhury presided over the 41st session during the final years of the Cold War. Rahman takes the chair in a multipolar international system marked by major-power competition, armed conflicts, climate disruption, pressure on development financing and growing disputes over whether institutions created eight decades ago remain capable of responding to contemporary crises.
Rahman has consequently made restoring confidence in multilateralism the central theme of his presidency. The official theme of the 81st session is “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations That Delivers for All.” His programme is organised around six interconnected areas spanning peace and security, sustainable development, climate and environmental action, human rights and humanitarian protection, emerging technologies and artificial intelligence, and reform of multilateral institutions.
Bangladesh's own international experience is embedded in that agenda. Rahman has cited the service of more than 200,000 Bangladeshi peacekeepers over the country's history of UN peacekeeping as a basis for advocating conflict prevention, political solutions, peacebuilding and civilian protection. Bangladesh's experience as a developing country also gives Rahman a platform to push questions involving the Sustainable Development Goals, development finance and the interests of countries facing particular economic vulnerabilities.
Rahman himself brings an unusual combination of national and institutional UN experience to the presidency. He entered Bangladesh's diplomatic service in 1979 and later worked at the country's Permanent Mission to the United Nations. He joined the UN system in 1991 and spent roughly 25 years in senior positions in New York and Geneva, including at the UN Conference on Trade and Development. The UN says he has participated in 16 General Assembly sessions and accumulated more than three decades of experience with the organization.
That background could become particularly relevant because UNGA81 is not an ordinary General Assembly cycle.
António Guterres' second term as UN Secretary-General ends on December 31, 2026, meaning the process of selecting his successor will unfold during Rahman's presidency. Under the UN Charter, the Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly upon recommendation of the Security Council. The Security Council therefore retains decisive power over which candidate reaches the Assembly, particularly because its five permanent members can exercise vetoes, but the General Assembly remains formally responsible for the appointment.
That puts the Bangladesh-led presidency in the institutional centre of one of the UN's most consequential leadership transitions.
Rahman acknowledged that responsibility in his opening remarks on September 8, when he said his principal pledge for the 81st session was to work to revive trust in the General Assembly. His presidency will have to navigate competing interests among major powers while simultaneously protecting the Assembly's claim to represent all 193 member states.
For Bangladesh, the diplomatic value of the presidency is therefore better understood as agenda access and international visibility than executive power. For one year, a Bangladeshi diplomat will chair meetings involving virtually every major international issue brought before the General Assembly, interact extensively with governments and regional blocs, facilitate negotiations and represent the Assembly during an unusually consequential period for the institution.
There are also limits that should not be obscured by the symbolism. Rahman cannot use the presidency to convert Bangladesh's national foreign-policy preferences into UN decisions. General Assembly outcomes still depend on member states, while binding peace-and-security authority remains concentrated heavily in the Security Council. The credibility of his presidency will therefore depend partly on whether other governments regard him as an impartial facilitator rather than an advocate for Dhaka.
That may ultimately be what makes Bangladesh's return after four decades most significant.
In 1986, Bangladesh demonstrated that a relatively young developing state could place one of its diplomats at the head of the General Assembly. Forty years later, the country returns to the same chair in a far larger and more politically fragmented international system. The prestige is considerable, but UNGA81 will measure something more difficult: whether Bangladesh's Khalilur Rahman can convert the visibility of the presidency into consensus at a moment when consensus inside the United Nations has become increasingly difficult to achieve.