The world on the road to the 81st UN General Assembly: record conflict, record armament, slowing trade

Summary

CEBRI's five-page briefing note, published on 22 September, sets out the backdrop to the 81st UN General Assembly (22–28 September) under four headings. On climate, drawing on the UNFCCC's September 2026 report, it now treats overshooting the 1.5°C limit as unavoidable: even in the optimistic scenario the end-of-century peak is +1.8°C, and without effective adaptation global food production could fall by up to 14% by 2050. On conflict, using Uppsala data, it records 2025 as the most violent year since 1946: 65 state-based armed conflicts in 35 countries, 245,000 direct battle deaths (188,000 in 2024) and 76,500 civilian deaths from one-sided violence, the highest count since the Rwandan genocide.

On armament, according to SIPRI's April 2026 data, world military expenditure rose by 2.9% in real terms in 2025 to 2,887 billion dollars, reaching 2.5% of global GDP; while the US cut spending by 7.5%, the world excluding the US increased it by 9.2%, with Europe leading at 14% and the Americas falling by 6.6%. The note stresses that Brazil, despite this regional decline, raised spending by 13% to 23.9 billion dollars, and that the US–China spending gap narrowed from 3.2 times to 2.8 times. On trade, based on the WTO's March 2026 forecast, it shows merchandise trade volume growth slowing from 4.6% in 2025 to 1.9% in 2026, though no scenario foresees a contraction, and the share of trade conducted at most-favoured-nation tariffs falling from about 83% in 2022 to about 72% in February 2026.