A maiden visit to UNGA BY Muhammad Zahid Rifat.

THE United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)'s 77th session commenced in New York, US, on 20 September and continued for a week till 26 September 2022.

More than 140 Heads of States, Governments and representatives were there to participate in the UNGA deliberations as a number of Heads of State and Government addressed the forum deliberating on matters of bilateral and international interests and concerns.

Pakistan was represented at the UNGA this time by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, this being his first visit there ever since he had assumed power in April 2022.

The Prime Minister was accompanied by Defence Minister Khwaja Mohammad Asif, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb among others.

The Prime Minister addressed the UNGA as scheduled on September 23 and put forth Pakistan's case quite convincingly and strongly while highlighting plight and miseries of the large number of unprecedented flash floods and heaviest rains affected people, plainly telling that the massive devastation and destruction in most parts of the country due to floods and rains was the most adverse impact of the climate change, ongoing relief, rehabilitation efforts as the one third of the country still was under flood water according to the country' s available limited resources and emphatically called for continued excessive flow of relief goods for the flood victims from friendly countries and international humanitarian organizations.

Planes loads of relief goods from more and more countries were landing at Islamabad and Karachi airports quite frequently but Pakistan needs much more help and assistance from the international community and organizations for continuing massive relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction of the infrastructure in the flood-hit areas and also saving the flood-hit people from onrushing winter season, the prime minister said adding quite rightly that the flood-affected people were now exposed to epidemics arising from water born diseases and they also needed required medicines for recovering these killing diseases.

The UNGA was told that more than 3 crore people including women and children have perished in the heaviest ever rains and floods onrushing water which had washed away large number of villages, demolished and destroyed thousands of houses and massively uprooting trees and infrastructure facilities in all...