At UN General Assembly, Yunus to seek help rebuilding Bangladesh’s ‘shattered economy’

Updated at 3:54 p.m. ET on 2024-09-21

In his first foreign trip as Bangladesh's interim leader, Muhammad Yunus is expected to ask the world next week to help rebuild a country with a “shattered economy” and ongoing civil unrest in the streets.

In his speech, scheduled for Sept. 27 before the United Nations General Assembly, he is expected to recount how the autocratic government of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted by a student-led movement, officials said.

In addition, he will try to navigate a rocky relationship with giant neighbor India, which has given Hasina shelter.

Yunus’ appearance at the U.N. has created interest in Bangladesh and globally. He is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate struggling to restore order after the dramatic fall of a long-time leader. 

Yunus is a familiar figure in the environs of the United Nations in New York. He has spoken before U.N. organizations’ events as a Nobel winner and as the founder of Grameen Bank, the microloans institution that got the peace prize committee’s attention.

“But this time he's going there with a new identity,” Badiul Alam Majumdar, a leader at a Dhaka-based NGO, Shushashoner Jonno Nagorik, told BenarNews.

“Yunus now serves as chief adviser of the country with the aim of building a new Bangladesh. He assumed this new identity on Aug. 8 through an unprecedented student-people uprising.”

Yunus’ arrival at the U.N. may be met with protests, as members of Hasina’s Awami League party have started campaigns urging Bangladeshis residing in the wider New York area to join rallies against him.

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Essential staff only

Accompanying Yunus on his trip to New York for the week-long U.N. General Assembly session will be seven people.

By comparison, Hasina arrived for the 2015 UNGA session with a 227-member team. After this figure became public knowledge, her government did not say how many people accompanied her in the years that followed.

Yunus’ team will be “small and functional,” the Bangladesh media reported his foreign affairs advisor as saying.

When contacted, Yunus’s deputy press secretary, Abul Kalam Azad Majumdar, said only “relevant and necessary” officials would travel to participate in the assembly.

“Look, this matter is very normal for us. What happened before is none of our business,” Majumdar told BenarNews.

Yunus’ press secretary Shafiqul Alam said many countries’ leaders would be interested in hearing Yunus talk about the ongoing reform efforts in Bangladesh when he speaks next week.

“[T]he reforms in Bangladesh or the process of rebuilding the country that has started can be highlighted,” Alam told BenarNews.

“The issues of reconstructing democratic institutions and the shattered economy will be hopefully mentioned in [Yunus’] speech as well.”

Former Bangladeshi diplomat Humayun Kabir said Yunus must raise the Rohingya issue because all countries ought to have a role in attempting to solve the refugee crisis.

Meetings on sidelines

Yunus and his delegation are expected to hold bilateral meetings with a few foreign leaders, said Md. Touhid Hossain, foreign affairs adviser.

As of yet, though, there are no plans to meet with the leader of Bangladesh’s neighbor, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

India gave shelter to Hasina after she resigned as prime minister on Aug. 5 and fled to the neighboring country. Yunus subsequently told Indian media that she should "keep quiet" while there, and added that bilateral relations between the countries were "now at a low."

“The timings of the two heads of government’s visits are very different ... therefore, it is highly likely that this meeting will not take place,” said a foreign ministry official who asked to not be identified ahead of a press conference on Saturday to announce plans.

In India, The Hindustan Times daily quoted diplomatic sources on Thursday saying no meeting is expected between Yunus and Modi in New York next week.

“Earlier this month, the Bangladesh side made a formal request for a meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly, which both leaders are set to attend,” the publication reported citing unnamed sources.

“Dhaka was keen on a meeting in the hope it would help clear the air over irritants that have emerged in bilateral ties since the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government, the people said on condition of anonymity.”

However, Yunus may meet with the prime ministers of two other neighbors, Pakistan’s Shahbaz Sharif and Nepal’s K.P. Sharma Oli, on the sidelines of the assembly, officials in Dhaka said.

Other potential meetings include European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen; United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk; United Nations Refugee Agency chief Filippo Grandi; and International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan.

An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Bangladesh's foreign affairs adviser, and incorrectly stated that Yunus is the only Nobel Laureate currently leading a country.