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War in Gaza to top UNGA agenda as 79th session begins on Sept. 24

War in Gaza to top UNGA agenda as 79th session begins on Sept. 24
Palestinians check the grounds of a school after an Israeli air strike hit the site, in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on September 11, 2024, amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
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Updated 12 September 2024
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War in Gaza to top UNGA agenda as 79th session begins on Sept. 24

War in Gaza to top UNGA agenda as 79th session begins on Sept. 24
  • 87 heads of state, three VPs, two crown princes, 45 heads of government, eight deputy heads of government, 45 ministers currently due to address
  • One of the longest speeches made during General Assembly was by Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1960 who spoke for about four and a half hours
Updated 12 September 2024
Reuters
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UNITED NATIONS: Every September world leaders travel to New York to address the start of the annual United Nations General Assembly session.
The six days of speeches to mark the beginning of the 79th session will start on Sept. 24.
WHO SPEAKS WHEN?
When the United Nations was formed in 1945 following World War Two, there were originally 51 members. That has since grown to 193 members. Leaders of two non-member observer states — known at the UN as the Holy See and the State of Palestine — and an observer member, the European Union, can also speak.
It is tradition for Brazil to always be the first member state to speak. This is because in the early years of the world body Brazil stepped up to speak first when other countries were reluctant to do so, say UN officials.
As host to the UN headquarters in New York, the United States is the second country to address the General Assembly.
From there the list is then based on hierarchy and generally a first come, first served basis. Heads of state speak first, followed by deputy heads of state and crown princes, heads of government, ministers, and lower-ranked heads of a delegation.
This year some 87 heads of state, three vice presidents, two crown princes, 45 heads of government, eight deputy heads of government, 45 ministers, and four lower-ranked heads of a delegation are currently due to address the General Assembly.
Last year fewer than 12 percent of those to stand at the lectern were women.
HOW LONG WILL THEY SPEAK?
Leaders are asked to stick to a voluntary 15-minute time limit.
According to UN records, one of the longest speeches made during the opening of a General Assembly was by Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1960 — he spoke for about four and a half hours. More recently, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi spoke for more than one and a half hours in 2009.




UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses the 78th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on September 19, 2023. (Photo courtesy: UN/File)

WHAT WILL THEY TALK ABOUT?
Each high-level gathering to mark the start of the annual General Assembly session has a theme, which leaders tend to briefly reference before moving on to talking about whatever they want.
This year’s theme is: “Leaving no one behind: acting together for the advancement of peace, sustainable development and human dignity for present and future generations.”
Some other topics likely to be spoken about by leaders include:
THE WAR IN GAZA
With the civilian death toll in Gaza ballooning to more than 41,000 people according to local health officials and the humanitarian situation deteriorating, many leaders are expected to call for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas.
The conflict started nearly a year ago with the deadly Hamas attack on civilians in Israel on Oct. 7 — two weeks after world leaders had finished meeting at the last UN General Assembly.
After Israel began retaliating against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the General Assembly on Oct. 27 called for an immediate humanitarian truce. It then overwhelming demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in December.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who has long accused the UN of being anti-Israel — and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are both scheduled to address the General Assembly on Sept. 26.




A military jeep patrols the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Israel, September 11, 2024. (REUTERS)

UKRAINE
Many world leaders are likely to call for an end to Russia’s roughly two-and-a-half year war in Ukraine.
The General Assembly adopted six resolutions on the conflict in the first year — denouncing Moscow and demanding it withdraw all its troops. A resolution in October 2022 — condemning Russia’s “attempted illegal annexation” of four regions in Ukraine — won the greatest support with 143 states voting yes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to address the General Assembly on Sept. 25.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin virtually addressed the General Assembly in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, he has not physically traveled to New York for the event since 2015. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is instead due to speak to the General Assembly on Sept. 28.
CLIMATE
As the world struggles to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, leaders of smaller island nations and other states most affected by climate changes are likely to use their speeches at the General Assembly to again make impassioned pleas for action.




Residents wade through the flooded waters outside their homes following heavy rains in Charsadda district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on April 17, 2024. (AFP/File)

UN SECURITY COUNCIL REFORM
Many world leaders — particularly from Africa and key powers including Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan — are likely to call for reform of the 15-member UN Security Council, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security.
It is an issue that has long been discussed by the General Assembly, but has gathered steam in recent years after Russia invaded Ukraine and then used its Security Council veto to block any action by the body. The United States has also long been criticized for shielding its ally Israel from council action.
Reform ideas include expanding the council’s membership — through adding more permanent veto powers or short-term elected members — to better reflect the world and limiting the veto, currently held by the US, Russia, China, Britain and France.
Any changes to the Security Council membership is done by amending the founding UN Charter. This needs the approval and ratification by two-thirds of the General Assembly, including the Security Council’s current five veto powers.
SUMMIT OF THE FUTURE
Before the leaders begin addressing the General Assembly, a two-day Summit of the Future will be held on Sept. 22-23. UN member states are currently negotiating three documents they hope to adopt on Sept. 22 — a pact for the future, a declaration on future generations and a global digital compact.
Speaking to Reuters on Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was “absolutely essential” to ambitiously use the summit to come up with “adequate governance for the world of today.”
He argued for reform of the 15-member UN Security Council, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and for global governance of artificial intelligence and other emerging challenges.
 

Topics: UNGA 2024 War on Gaza Pakistan at UNGA

Taliban orders NGOs in Afghanistan to stop employing women

Taliban orders NGOs in Afghanistan to stop employing women
Updated 30 December 2024
AP
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Taliban orders NGOs in Afghanistan to stop employing women

Taliban orders NGOs in Afghanistan to stop employing women
  • The Economy Ministry warned that failure to comply with the latest order would lead to NGOs losing their license to operate in Afghanistan
Updated 30 December 2024
AP

The Taliban says it will close all national and foreign nongovernmental groups in Afghanistan employing women. It comes two years after they told NGOs to suspend the employment of Afghan women, allegedly because they didn’t wear the Islamic headscarf correctly.
In a letter published on X Sunday night, the Economy Ministry warned that failure to comply with the latest order would lead to NGOs losing their license to operate in Afghanistan.
The ministry said it was responsible for the registration, coordination, leadership and supervision of all activities carried out by national and foreign organizations.
The government was once again ordering the stoppage of all female work in institutions not controlled by the Taliban, according to the letter.
“In case of lack of cooperation, all activities of that institution will be canceled and the activity license of that institution, granted by the ministry, will also be canceled.”
The Taliban have already barred women from many jobs and most public spaces. They have also excluded them from education beyond sixth grade.

Topics: Afghanistan

How a driving school program empowers Pakistani women

How a driving school program empowers Pakistani women
Updated 30 December 2024
Reuters
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How a driving school program empowers Pakistani women

How a driving school program empowers Pakistani women
  • Women driving cars or riding pillion on two-wheelers driven by a male relative is more socially acceptable
  • The WOW program has been in operation since 2017, but has become increasingly popular in recent months
Updated 30 December 2024
Reuters

LAHORE, Pakistan: Pakistani student Laiba Rashid, 22, hopes her life will change once she learns how to drive a motorcycle after undergoing a training program that teaches women how to operate two-wheelers in the bustling eastern city of Lahore.
Although the program is 7 years old, it’s rare to see women driving motorcycles. Women driving cars or riding pillion on two-wheelers driven by a male relative is more socially acceptable in the conservative, Islamic nation.
“I hope this will change my life because I am dependent on my brother to pick me up and drop me to college,” Rashid said on her first day at the Women on Wheels (WOW) driving program offered free by the Lahore traffic police.
She said she wants to buy a motorcycle to go to college, adding that, previously, there were no women drivers in her family. “Now everybody is convinced that women should be independent in their movement to schools, jobs and markets,” she said.
Women driving two-wheelers has been a cultural and religious taboo, said Bushra Iqbal Hussain, a social activist and director of Safe Childhood, an organization advocating the safety of female children.
But more women are now changing the culture, she said, like they did in the 1980s with regular cars, in a bid to reduce their reliance on men to commute.
The WOW program has been in operation since 2017, but has become increasingly popular in recent months as car prices have soared and motorcycles offer a cheaper alternative.
“Stagnant wage growth and high inflation have eroded the purchasing power of the middle class, leaving motorcycles as the only viable option for many households,” said auto sector analyst Muhammad Abrar Polani of investment house Arif Habib Limited.
The cheapest four-wheeler in Pakistan, where the annual GDP per capita is $1,590, costs about 2.3 million rupees($8,265) compared to about 115,000 rupees for the most affordable China-made two-wheeler.
Sohail Mudassar, a traffic warden, said the WOW program has trained at least 6,600 women, and Rashid’s batch was the 86th since it started.
“Women of different ages and segments of society join our camp,” said female trainer Humaira Rafaqat, a senior traffic warden who has trained about 1,000 women. “Young women are quick learners because they are enthusiastic and take risks.”
One of them, Ghania Raza, 23, who is pursuing a doctorate in criminology, said learning to drive a two-wheeler gave her a deep sense of achievement and empowerment: “It was like breaking a glass ceiling,” she said.
Shumaila Shafiq, 36, a mother of three and a part-time fashion designer, said she has been driving her husband’s motorcycle to the market and other places after graduating from the program.
She has designed a special short length abaya, a dress used by conservative Muslim women, to wear while operating the motorcycle.
“Wearing a long abaya with loose fitting poses risks as it may get entangled in the wheels,” she said, adding that she intends to market the design to fellow women riders.

Topics: Pakistan

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Brace for turbulence: Lessons from a bumpy ‘super year’ of global elections

Brace for turbulence: Lessons from a bumpy ‘super year’ of global elections
Updated 30 December 2024
AP
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Brace for turbulence: Lessons from a bumpy ‘super year’ of global elections

Brace for turbulence: Lessons from a bumpy ‘super year’ of global elections
  • Seventy countries, home to half of the world’s populations, held elections this year in which many incumbents perished
  • International affairs experts note 2024 elections saw the rise of the right in several countries, including the UK and EU
Updated 30 December 2024
AP

LONDON: When voters around the globe had their say in 2024, their message was often: “You’re fired.”

Some 70 countries that are home to half the world’s population held elections this year, and in many incumbents were punished. From India and the United States to Japan, France and Britain, voters tired of economic disruption and global instability rejected sitting governments — and sometimes turned to disruptive outsiders.

The rocky democratic landscape just seemed to get bumpier as a dramatic year careened toward its end, with mass protests in Mozambique and Georgia, an election annulled in Romania and an attempt to impose martial law in South Korea.

Cas Mudde, a professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia who studies extremism and democracy, summed up 2024 in Prospect magazine as “a great year for the far right, a terrible year for incumbents and a troublesome year for democracy around the world.”

INCUMBENTS BATTERED

One message sent by voters in 2024: They’re fed up.

University of Manchester political scientist Rob Ford has attributed the anti-incumbent mood to “electoral long COVID” -– lingering pandemic-related health, education, social and economic disruptions that have made millions of people unhappier and worse off. High inflation, fueled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and mass displacement from that war and conflicts in the Middle East and Africa have added to the global unease.

In South Africa, high unemployment and inequality helped drive a dramatic loss of support for the African National Congress, which had governed for three decades since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule. The party once led by Nelson Mandela lost its political dominance in May’s election and was forced to go into coalition with opposition parties.

Incumbents also were defeated in Senegal, Ghana and Botswana, where voters ousted the party that had been in power for 58 years since independence from Britain. Namibia’s ruling SWAPO party extended its 34 years in power in December -– but only by a whisker.

Uruguay’s leftist opposition candidate, Yamandú Orsi, became the country’s new president in a November runoff that delivered another rebuke to incumbents.

In India, the world’s largest democracy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party lost its parliamentary majority in a shock election result in June after a decade of dominance. It was forced to govern in coalition as the opposition doubled its strength in Parliament.

Japanese politics entered a new era of uncertainty after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s governing Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled almost without interruption since 1955, suffered a major loss in October amid voter anger at party financial scandals. It now leads a minority government.

The UK’s July election saw the right-of-center Conservatives ousted after 14 years in office as the center-left Labour Party swept to power in a landslide. But the results also revealed growing fragmentation: Support for the two big parties that have dominated British politics for a century shrank as voters turned to smaller parties, including the hard-right party Reform UK led by Nigel Farage.

AUTHORITARIANS ADVANCE

Britain is not alone in seeing a rise for the right. Elections in June for the parliament of the 27-nation European Union saw conservative populists and the far right rock ruling parties in France and Germany, the EU’s biggest and most powerful members.

The anti-immigration National Rally party won the first round of France’s parliamentary election in June, but alliances and tactical voting by the center and left knocked it down to third place in the second round, producing a divided legislature and a fragile government that collapsed in a Dec. 4 no-confidence vote.

In Austria, the conservative governing People’s Party was beaten by the far-right, pro-Russia Freedom Party in September, though other parties allied to keep it out of a coalition government.

Nepotism and political dynasties continued to exert influence -– and to be challenged. After messy elections in February, Pakistan elected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, younger brother of three-time leader Nawaz Sharif. Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest democracy, elected President Prabowo Subianto, son-in-law of the late dictator Suharto.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the world’s longest-serving female leader, won a fourth successive term in a January election that opposition parties boycotted. Months later, her 15-year rule came to a tumultuous end: After mass student-led protests in which hundreds were killed, Hasina was ousted in August and fled to India.

In Sri Lanka, voters also rejected a discredited old guard. Voters elected the Marxist Anura Kumara Dissanayake as president in September, two years after an island-wide public movement by an engaged middle class removed the long-ruling Rajapaksa clan.

INTERFERENCE ALLEGATIONS 

Covert meddling and online disinformation were growing concerns in 2024. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said that this year it took down 20 election-related “covert influence operations around the world, including in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the US” It said Russia was the top source of such meddling, followed by Iran and China.

In Romania, far-right candidate Călin Georgescu came from nowhere to win the first round of the presidential election in November, aided in part by a flood of TikTok videos promoting his campaign. Amid allegations of Russian meddling, Romania’s Constitutional Court canceled the presidential election runoff two days before it was due to take place after a trove of declassified intelligence alleged Russia organized a sprawling campaign across social media to promote Georgescu. No date has yet been set for a rerun.

Moldova’s pro-Western President Maia Sandu won a November runoff against her Moscow-friendly rival in an election seen as pivotal to the future of one of Europe’s poorest nations.
Georgia has seen huge protests since an election in October was won by the pro-Moscow Georgian Dream party, which suspended negotiations on joining the European Union. The opposition and the pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, have accused the governing party of rigging the vote with Russia’s help.

UNCERTAINTY REIGNS

Possibly the year’s most seismic result, Donald Trump’s victory in November’s US presidential election, has America’s allies and opponents bracing for what the unpredictable “America-first” leader will do with his second term.

And instability already reigns on several continents as the year ends. Venezuela has been in political crisis since a July election marred by serious fraud allegations which both President Nicolás Maduro and the opposition claim to have won. Amid opposition protests and a harsh crackdown, opposition candidate Edmundo González went into exile in Spain.

In Mozambique, the Frelimo party that has ruled for half a century was declared the winner of an October election that the opposition called rigged. Weeks of ongoing street protests across the country have left more than 100 dead.

South Korea’s conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol — weakened after the liberal opposition retained control in an April election -– astonished the country by declaring martial law in a late-night announcement on Dec. 3. Parliament voted to overturn the decision six hours later, and within days voted to impeach Yoon. The crisis in the deeply divided country is far from over.

Democracy’s bumpy ride looks likely to continue in 2025, with embattled incumbents facing challenge in countries including Germany, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote on Dec. 16, triggering an early election likely in February. Canada will also vote in 2025, with the governing Liberals widely unpopular and increasingly divided after almost a decade in power.

Seema Shah, head of democracy assessment at the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, said global surveys suggest support for the concept of democracy remains strong, but the numbers plummet “when you ask people how satisfied they are with their own democracy.”

“People want democracy. They like the theory of it,” she said. “But when they see it actually play out, it’s not living up to their expectations.”

Topics: elections 2024

Death toll in Ethiopia road accident rises to 71: local official

Death toll in Ethiopia road accident rises to 71: local official
Updated 30 December 2024
AFP
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Death toll in Ethiopia road accident rises to 71: local official

Death toll in Ethiopia road accident rises to 71: local official
Updated 30 December 2024
AFP

NAIROBI: The death toll from a road accident in southern Ethiopia has risen to at least 71, according to a local police official.
In a Facebook post late Sunday, the Sidama Police Commission Traffic Prevention and Control Directorate said that “68 males and three females are known to have died in the accident so far,” citing Chief Inspector Daniel Sankura.
The police commission said the incident occurred at around 5:30 p.m. local time (1430 GMT) when the vehicle plunged off a road and into a river.
The post added that “two others have sustained heavy physical injuries,” but did not detail any further information about the number of passengers onboard at the time of the incident.
The accident occurred in Sidama state — some 300 kilometers (180 miles) south of the capital Addis Ababa — in the Eastern Zone, in Bona Zuria Woreda.
Blurred images shared by the health bureau earlier showed a mass of people surrounding a vehicle, partially submerged in water, with many seemingly attempting to help pull it from the waters.
Other images shared by the bureau appeared to show bodies, some covered in blue tarpaulin, lying on the ground.
Road accidents are common in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation, where roads are often poorly maintained.

Topics: Ethiopia road accident

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Jimmy Carter, 39th US president, dies aged 100

Jimmy Carter, 39th US president, dies aged 100
Updated 30 December 2024
AP
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Jimmy Carter, 39th US president, dies aged 100

Jimmy Carter, 39th US president, dies aged 100
  • Carter died over a year after entering hospice care, in his home in Plains, Georgia
  • He governed amid Cold War pressures, turbulent oil markets and social upheaval 
Updated 30 December 2024
AP

ATLANTA: Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who won the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Vietnam War, endured humbling defeat after one tumultuous term and then redefined life after the White House as a global humanitarian, has died. He was 100 years old.
The longest-lived American president died on Sunday, more than a year after entering hospice care, at his home in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died at 96 in November 2023, spent most of their lives, The Carter Center said.
“Our founder, former US President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia,” the center simply said in posting about Carter’s death on the social media platform X.
Businessman, Navy officer, evangelist, politician, negotiator, author, woodworker, citizen of the world — Carter forged a path that still challenges political assumptions and stands out among the 45 men who reached the nation’s highest office. The 39th president leveraged his ambition with a keen intellect, deep religious faith and prodigious work ethic, conducting diplomatic missions into his 80s and building houses for the poor well into his 90s.
“My faith demands — this is not optional — my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I have to try to make a difference,” Carter once said.
A president from Plains
A moderate Democrat, Carter entered the 1976 presidential race as a little-known Georgia governor with a broad smile, outspoken Baptist mores and technocratic plans reflecting his education as an engineer. His no-frills campaign depended on public financing, and his promise not to deceive the American people resonated after Richard Nixon’s disgrace and US defeat in southeast Asia.
“If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I would not deserve to be your president,” Carter repeated before narrowly beating Republican incumbent Gerald Ford, who had lost popularity pardoning Nixon.

President Jimmy Carter prepares to make a national television address from the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, on the failed mission to rescue the Iran hostages on April 25, 1980. (AP/File)

Carter governed amid Cold War pressures, turbulent oil markets and social upheaval over racism, women’s rights and America’s global role. His most acclaimed achievement in office was a Mideast peace deal that he brokered by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the bargaining table for 13 days in 1978. That Camp David experience inspired the post-presidential center where Carter would establish so much of his legacy.
Yet Carter’s electoral coalition splintered under double-digit inflation, gasoline lines and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran. His bleakest hour came when eight Americans died in a failed hostage rescue in April 1980, helping to ensure his landslide defeat to Republican Ronald Reagan.
Carter acknowledged in his 2020 “White House Diary” that he could be “micromanaging” and “excessively autocratic,” complicating dealings with Congress and the federal bureaucracy. He also turned a cold shoulder to Washington’s news media and lobbyists, not fully appreciating their influence on his political fortunes.
“It didn’t take us long to realize that the underestimation existed, but by that time we were not able to repair the mistake,” Carter told historians in 1982, suggesting that he had “an inherent incompatibility” with Washington insiders.
Carter insisted his overall approach was sound and that he achieved his primary objectives — to “protect our nation’s security and interests peacefully” and “enhance human rights here and abroad” — even if he fell spectacularly short of a second term.
And then, the world
Ignominious defeat, though, allowed for renewal. The Carters founded The Carter Center in 1982 as a first-of-its-kind base of operations, asserting themselves as international peacemakers and champions of democracy, public health and human rights.
“I was not interested in just building a museum or storing my White House records and memorabilia,” Carter wrote in a memoir published after his 90th birthday. “I wanted a place where we could work.”
That work included easing nuclear tensions in North and South Korea, helping to avert a US invasion of Haiti and negotiating ceasefires in Bosnia and Sudan. By 2022, The Carter Center had declared at least 113 elections in Latin America, Asia and Africa to be free or fraudulent. Recently, the center began monitoring US elections as well.
Carter’s stubborn self-assuredness and even self-righteousness proved effective once he was unencumbered by the Washington order, sometimes to the point of frustrating his successors.
He went “where others are not treading,” he said, to places like Ethiopia, Liberia and North Korea, where he secured the release of an American who had wandered across the border in 2010.
“I can say what I like. I can meet whom I want. I can take on projects that please me and reject the ones that don’t,” Carter said.
He announced an arms-reduction-for-aid deal with North Korea without clearing the details with Bill Clinton’s White House. He openly criticized President George W. Bush for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He also criticized America’s approach to Israel with his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” And he repeatedly countered US administrations by insisting North Korea should be included in international affairs, a position that most aligned Carter with Republican President Donald Trump.
Among the center’s many public health initiatives, Carter vowed to eradicate the guinea worm parasite during his lifetime, and nearly achieved it: Cases dropped from millions in the 1980s to nearly a handful. With hardhats and hammers, the Carters also built homes with Habitat for Humanity.
The Nobel committee’s 2002 Peace Prize cites his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Carter should have won it alongside Sadat and Begin in 1978, the chairman added.
Carter accepted the recognition saying there was more work to be done.
“The world is now, in many ways, a more dangerous place,” he said. “The greater ease of travel and communication has not been matched by equal understanding and mutual respect.”

 President-elect Jimmy Carter leans over to shake hands with some of the people riding the "Peanut Special" to Washington on Jan. 19, 1977. (AP/File)

‘An epic American life’
Carter’s globetrotting took him to remote villages where he met little “Jimmy Carters,” so named by admiring parents. But he spent most of his days in the same one-story Plains house — expanded and guarded by Secret Service agents — where they lived before he became governor. He regularly taught Sunday School lessons at Maranatha Baptist Church until his mobility declined and the coronavirus pandemic raged. Those sessions drew visitors from around the world to the small sanctuary where Carter will receive his final send-off after a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral.
The common assessment that he was a better ex-president than president rankled Carter and his allies. His prolific post-presidency gave him a brand above politics, particularly for Americans too young to witness him in office. But Carter also lived long enough to see biographers and historians reassess his White House years more generously.
His record includes the deregulation of key industries, reduction of US dependence on foreign oil, cautious management of the national debt and notable legislation on the environment, education and mental health. He focused on human rights in foreign policy, pressuring dictators to release thousands of political prisoners. He acknowledged America’s historical imperialism, pardoned Vietnam War draft evaders and relinquished control of the Panama Canal. He normalized relations with China.
“I am not nominating Jimmy Carter for a place on Mount Rushmore,” Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s domestic policy director, wrote in a 2018 book.
“He was not a great president” but also not the “hapless and weak” caricature voters rejected in 1980, Eizenstat said. Rather, Carter was “good and productive” and “delivered results, many of which were realized only after he left office.”
Madeleine Albright, a national security staffer for Carter and Clinton’s secretary of state, wrote in Eizenstat’s forward that Carter was “consequential and successful” and expressed hope that “perceptions will continue to evolve” about his presidency.
“Our country was lucky to have him as our leader,” said Albright, who died in 2022.
Jonathan Alter, who penned a comprehensive Carter biography published in 2020, said in an interview that Carter should be remembered for “an epic American life” spanning from a humble start in a home with no electricity or indoor plumbing through decades on the world stage across two centuries.
“He will likely go down as one of the most misunderstood and underestimated figures in American history,” Alter told The Associated Press.

US President Barack Obama (L) stands with First Lady Michelle Obama (2nd-R) and former presidents Jimmy Carter (2nd-L) and Bill Clinton during the ceremony to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom August 28, 2013 in Washington, DC. Carter, the 100-year-old former US president and Nobel peace laureate who rose from humble beginnings in rural Georgia to lead the nation from 1977 to 1981, has died, his nonprofit foundation said on December 29, 2024. (AFP/File)

A small-town start
James Earl Carter Jr. was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains and spent his early years in nearby Archery. His family was a minority in the mostly Black community, decades before the civil rights movement played out at the dawn of Carter’s political career.
Carter, who campaigned as a moderate on race relations but governed more progressively, talked often of the influence of his Black caregivers and playmates but also noted his advantages: His land-owning father sat atop Archery’s tenant-farming system and owned a main street grocery. His mother, Lillian, would become a staple of his political campaigns.
Seeking to broaden his world beyond Plains and its population of fewer than 1,000 — then and now — Carter won an appointment to the US Naval Academy, graduating in 1946. That same year he married Rosalynn Smith, another Plains native, a decision he considered more important than any he made as head of state. She shared his desire to see the world, sacrificing college to support his Navy career.
Carter climbed in rank to lieutenant, but then his father was diagnosed with cancer, so the submarine officer set aside his ambitions of admiralty and moved the family back to Plains. His decision angered Rosalynn, even as she dived into the peanut business alongside her husband.
Carter again failed to talk with his wife before his first run for office — he later called it “inconceivable” not to have consulted her on such major life decisions — but this time, she was on board.
“My wife is much more political,” Carter told the AP in 2021.
He won a state Senate seat in 1962 but wasn’t long for the General Assembly and its back-slapping, deal-cutting ways. He ran for governor in 1966 — losing to arch-segregationist Lester Maddox — and then immediately focused on the next campaign.
Carter had spoken out against church segregation as a Baptist deacon and opposed racist “Dixiecrats” as a state senator. Yet as a local school board leader in the 1950s he had not pushed to end school segregation even after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, despite his private support for integration. And in 1970, Carter ran for governor again as the more conservative Democrat against Carl Sanders, a wealthy businessman Carter mocked as “Cufflinks Carl.” Sanders never forgave him for anonymous, race-baiting flyers, which Carter disavowed.
Ultimately, Carter won his races by attracting both Black voters and culturally conservative whites. Once in office, he was more direct.
“I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over,” he declared in his 1971 inaugural address, setting a new standard for Southern governors that landed him on the cover of Time magazine.
‘Jimmy Who?’
His statehouse initiatives included environmental protection, boosting rural education and overhauling antiquated executive branch structures. He proclaimed Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the slain civil rights leader’s home state. And he decided, as he received presidential candidates in 1972, that they were no more talented than he was.
In 1974, he ran Democrats’ national campaign arm. Then he declared his own candidacy for 1976. An Atlanta newspaper responded with the headline: “Jimmy Who?”
The Carters and a “Peanut Brigade” of family members and Georgia supporters camped out in Iowa and New Hampshire, establishing both states as presidential proving grounds. His first Senate endorsement: a young first-termer from Delaware named Joe Biden.
Yet it was Carter’s ability to navigate America’s complex racial and rural politics that cemented the nomination. He swept the Deep South that November, the last Democrat to do so, as many white Southerners shifted to Republicans in response to civil rights initiatives.
A self-declared “born-again Christian,” Carter drew snickers by referring to Scripture in a Playboy magazine interview, saying he “had looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” The remarks gave Ford a new foothold and television comedians pounced — including NBC’s new “Saturday Night Live” show. But voters weary of cynicism in politics found it endearing.
Carter chose Minnesota Sen. Walter “Fritz” Mondale as his running mate on a “Grits and Fritz” ticket. In office, he elevated the vice presidency and the first lady’s office. Mondale’s governing partnership was a model for influential successors Al Gore, Dick Cheney and Biden. Rosalynn Carter was one of the most involved presidential spouses in history, welcomed into Cabinet meetings and huddles with lawmakers and top aides.
The Carters presided with uncommon informality: He used his nickname “Jimmy” even when taking the oath of office, carried his own luggage and tried to silence the Marine Band’s “Hail to the Chief.” They bought their clothes off the rack. Carter wore a cardigan for a White House address, urging Americans to conserve energy by turning down their thermostats. Amy, the youngest of four children, attended District of Columbia public school.
Washington’s social and media elite scorned their style. But the larger concern was that “he hated politics,” according to Eizenstat, leaving him nowhere to turn politically once economic turmoil and foreign policy challenges took their toll.
Accomplishments, and ‘malaise’
Carter partially deregulated the airline, railroad and trucking industries and established the departments of Education and Energy, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He designated millions of acres of Alaska as national parks or wildlife refuges. He appointed a then-record number of women and nonwhite people to federal posts. He never had a Supreme Court nomination, but he elevated civil rights attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the nation’s second highest court, positioning her for a promotion in 1993. He appointed Paul Volker, the Federal Reserve chairman whose policies would help the economy boom in the 1980s — after Carter left office. He built on Nixon’s opening with China, and though he tolerated autocrats in Asia, pushed Latin America from dictatorships to democracy.
But he couldn’t immediately tame inflation or the related energy crisis.
And then came Iran.
After he admitted the exiled Shah of Iran to the US for medical treatment, the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun in 1979 by followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Negotiations to free the hostages broke down repeatedly ahead of the failed rescue attempt.
The same year, Carter signed SALT II, the new strategic arms treaty with Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, only to pull it back, impose trade sanctions and order a US boycott of the Moscow Olympics after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
Hoping to instill optimism, he delivered what the media dubbed his “malaise” speech, although he didn’t use that word. He declared the nation was suffering “a crisis of confidence.” By then, many Americans had lost confidence in the president, not themselves.
Carter campaigned sparingly for reelection because of the hostage crisis, instead sending Rosalynn as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy challenged him for the Democratic nomination. Carter famously said he’d “kick his ass,” but was hobbled by Kennedy as Reagan rallied a broad coalition with “make America great again” appeals and asking voters whether they were “better off than you were four years ago.”
Reagan further capitalized on Carter’s lecturing tone, eviscerating him in their lone fall debate with the quip: “There you go again.” Carter lost all but six states and Republicans rolled to a new Senate majority.
Carter successfully negotiated the hostages’ freedom after the election, but in one final, bitter turn of events, Tehran waited until hours after Carter left office to let them walk free.
‘A wonderful life’
At 56, Carter returned to Georgia with “no idea what I would do with the rest of my life.”
Four decades after launching The Carter Center, he still talked of unfinished business.
“I thought when we got into politics we would have resolved everything,” Carter told the AP in 2021. “But it’s turned out to be much more long-lasting and insidious than I had thought it was. I think in general, the world itself is much more divided than in previous years.”
Still, he affirmed what he said when he underwent treatment for a cancer diagnosis in his 10th decade of life.
“I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” he said in 2015. “I’ve had a wonderful life. I’ve had thousands of friends, I’ve had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence.”

Topics: Jimmy Carter

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