If you’re in the mood for stranger-than-fiction stories of diplomatic SNAFUs and bureaucratic absurdity, we recommend heading to New York City, where the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is taking place this week. Heads of state are people, too, and as UNGAs past have demonstrated, sometimes odd ones.
This annual event is monumental in the world of international diplomacy. Governments make enormous commitments to combat climate change and illiteracy, diplomats sign peace deals, and world leaders make all kinds of declarations. But the serious substance of the meetings is often accompanied by awkward, and sometimes hilarious, moments.
In no particular order, here are a few of our favorite stories from this endlessly amusing event — of sleeping in unexpected places, diplomatic shopping sprees, and speaking like the world owes you. (Shout out to everyone on Twitter who helped us crowdsource this list!)
And if you’re at the General Assembly this year, have you seen anything that could top these moments?
10. Equality comes in many forms.
There are persistent rumors that behind the lectern at UNGA are a series of wooden blocks of different heights, so that all world leaders look to be pretty much the same height when addressing the assembly. The blocks apparently have nicknames according to how high they are: the “Castro,” the “Sarkozy,” the “Obama,” etc.
9. Cozy sleeping arrangements.
A small country flew in staffers to New York City for UNGA a few years ago, but since the already high prices of hotels skyrocket in September, they had their diplomats and policy experts sleep on the floor in their offices.
8. Every spot is a nap spot, if you try.
Speech season can wear down even the toughest negotiators. We’ve heard lots of stories of people stepping over sleeping Fifth Committee delegates in the fancy East Lounge — which in late September seems to be used less for negotiating budgets and more for napping at odd hours. A few years ago, a French ambassador published a guide on places to nap in the United Nations. Even in a building constructed of glass, he says, the determined can find spots to catch a wink.
7. The smoothest blunder.
A minister was given remarks to deliver during a high-level meeting. But right before his speech began, he inadvertently picked up the wrong piece of paper, and began delivering another minister’s remarks as his own. The junior staffer who had accompanied the minister was too mortified to do anything. Finally, someone else from his team rushed into the meeting room, tapped the minister on the shoulder, covered the mic, and quietly informed him of the mix-up. Not skipping a beat, the minister picked up his real speech and began delivering it as if nothing had happened.
6. Macy’s diplomacy.
We’re pretty sure Apple’s release of new products is timed to line up with UNGA. The Apple Store at Grand Central Station, just around the corner from the U.N. headquarters in Midtown East, is sure to have long lines as delegates stock up on new iPhones and other products for friends and family back home.
We’ve also seen foreign ministers go on last minute shopping expeditions during their few precious days in New York City — but with their 20 minders, political advisers, and negotiators in tow, all of whom end up vying for the minister’s attention in the aisles of Bloomingdale’s.
5. Everything is political.
After a Chinese insurance firm bought the Waldorf Astoria chain of hotels in 2015 — which the United States had used for years as a base during UNGA — President Barack Obama’s team decided that he would be better off staying somewhere else. Whether the decision was made for fears of espionage, or whether it was a political statement, the world will never know.
4. I spy, with my little eye…
Speaking of espionage, the U.N.’s history is filled with colorful moments. In 1960, during the thick of the Cold War, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge led a meeting about the shooting down of an American spy plane over Soviet territory. In the middle of the debate, he took out a Soviet gift and then proceeded to “extract a tiny microphone out of the eagle’s beak with a pair of tweezers.” Needless to say, the Cold War continued. (This didn’t take place during UNGA week, but it was too good an anecdote not to include.)
3. Security vs. Security.
Who can forget when, in 2011, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bodyguards began physically fighting with the United Nations security guards, as if it were a WWE event? The Turkish security wanted to enter a meeting with their leader, but the room was filled to capacity, and everything tipped towards chaos.
2. The thick red line.
To demonstrate his frustration with Iran’s nuclear program, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2012 turned to Wile E. Coyote for inspiration: he held up a cartoon photo of a bomb with a thick red line below the fuse, symbolizing how the General Assembly must stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
1. Four score and seven years ago…
Many of you may remember when U.S. President Donald Trump’s gave North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un the nickname “Rocket Man” at last year’s General Assembly.
But these kinds of bombastic displays aren’t new for UNGA, where many world leaders get their five minutes to shine. Sometimes, less, um, democratic leaders take the opportunity to tell the world how they really feel. And take the space they feel they’re owed.
In his first address to UNGA in 2009, Libya’s leader Muammar al-Gadhafi far exceeded his 15 minutes and instead delivered a rambling 100-minute sermon. 75 minutes in, his translator shouted into the live microphone in Arabic, “I just can’t take it anymore!” The remainder of the speech was translated by one of their colleagues.
But Gadhafi’s isn’t the longest speech to grace the halls of UNGA. In 1960, Fidel Castro tossed a handkerchief over the light that was to indicate his five minutes allotted speech time, and instead delivered a speech that lasted four hours and 29 minutes.
