‘Ask India, Bangladesh’: Nepal PM Balen Shah tears into ‘broken’ global order at UN

Nepal Prime Minister Balendra “Balen” Shah used his maiden address to the UN General Assembly to deliver a sharp critique of the global order, saying a world capable of moving weapons efficiently across borders had failed to ensure that food, fuel and fertiliser reached people when they needed them. Speaking weeks after catastrophic floods devastated large parts of Nepal, Shah invoked India, Bangladesh and other South Asian countries to argue that the region was paying disproportionately for climate change and geopolitical conflicts it had done little to cause.

Addressing the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, the 36-year-old Prime Minister placed the August 26 Bhotekoshi-Trishuli floods at the centre of his speech. He described the disaster, which killed more than 1,400 people and left thousands unaccounted for, as a warning from the Himalayas that the international community could no longer afford to ignore.

‘Ask Bangladesh, ask India’

Shah contrasted global military supply chains with shortages experienced by ordinary people in developing countries. He said weapons could cross borders and reach their destinations on schedule even as farmers struggled to obtain fertiliser and families faced shortages of fuel.

“We have built a world with flawless logistics for war and broken logistics for food,” Shah said. He then widened the argument beyond Nepal, naming several of its South Asian neighbours as countries facing similar pressures.

“Ask Bangladesh. Ask Bhutan. Ask India. Ask the Maldives. Ask Pakistan. Ask Sri Lanka,” he said, arguing that countries across the region had been “hit by the climate we did not warm, and hit again by the wars we did not start”.

Shah said this pointed to deeper failures in the existing system of international cooperation. He argued that smaller and developing countries frequently bore the consequences of decisions and crises originating elsewhere while having limited influence over the institutions responsible for responding to them.

Floods a ‘warning to world’

The Nepal Prime Minister opened his address with the devastation caused by the Bhotekoshi-Trishuli floods, describing communities searching through mud, rocks and water for missing relatives and infrastructure being swept away within minutes. The disaster had interrupted Nepal’s progress towards its development goals and exposed the vulnerability of Himalayan communities, he said.

“The Bhotekoshi-Trishuli disaster was not just a local tragedy, it was a warning to the world,” Shah said, asking world leaders whether they had truly heard that warning.

The August 26 disaster was triggered after an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border sent floodwaters surging through the Bhotekoshi river system. Nepal has since estimated that rebuilding and recovery could require about $4.7 billion, with roads, bridges, hydropower installations and other infrastructure suffering extensive damage.

Shah said a warming climate was destabilising the Himalayan ecosystem as melting permafrost weakened mountain slopes and increased the threat from ice-rock avalanches, floods, landslides and cascading disasters. He noted that the devastation had extended across the Nepal-China border while floodwaters subsequently moved downstream towards India.

Calls for Himalayan mechanism

Against this backdrop, Shah called for a Himalayan climate-resilience mechanism involving Nepal, India and China. Such a framework, he argued, should strengthen cooperation on early-warning systems, scientific information, disaster preparedness and climate resilience across national boundaries.

His central argument was that climate change could not be addressed exclusively within political borders because Himalayan glaciers, rivers and extreme weather events were inherently transboundary. Nepal, he said, contributed only a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions but faced disproportionately severe consequences from a warming planet.

Shah also pressed wealthy countries and international institutions to rethink climate financing. He said countries devastated by climate-related disasters should not simply be offered additional large loans or forced to navigate lengthy bureaucratic procedures to secure assistance.

He called instead for adequate grant-based support and said existing mechanisms, including the Loss and Damage Fund and Global Environment Facility, remained inadequate for the scale of the challenge confronting vulnerable countries. Climate justice, he argued, had to encompass responsibility, reparation and resilience alongside immediate relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Youngest leader makes larger pitch

Shah also acknowledged that he was the youngest head of government addressing this year’s General Assembly but said he did not want his age to become the story. Instead, he sought to use his first appearance at the UN’s principal political forum to argue for a multilateral system in which smaller and poorer countries exercised greater influence.

He said the international system created after the World Wars had been founded on the principles that sovereignty, international law and human dignity mattered, and that weaker countries should not simply have to accept decisions made by more powerful states. That system, he argued, was now under severe strain as military and economic power increasingly determined whose voice was heard.

For Shah, Nepal’s devastating floods were therefore not simply a national disaster but evidence of a much larger problem. His message from the UN podium was that the Himalayan crisis had exposed weaknesses in the global response to climate change — and that South Asia could no longer afford for those weaknesses to remain unaddressed.