UN Secretary-General António Guterres to visit Armenia for COP17 summit

YEREVAN— United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will visit Armenia on October 15–16 to participate in a high-level biodiversity summit and hold meetings with senior Armenian officials.

During his visit, Guterres is scheduled to meet separately with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and President Vahagn Khachaturyan, the UN announced on Tuesday.

The Secretary-General will attend the opening of the Leaders’ Summit on Biodiversity and participate in the presentation of a report assessing global progress on biodiversity protection. On October 16, he is expected to address world leaders, emphasizing the interconnected challenges of environmental degradation, climate change and global instability.

The summit precedes the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17), which Armenia will host in Yerevan from October 19 to 30.

Guterres and Pashinyan previously met in New York on September 24, when they discussed preparations for COP17, Armenian-Azerbaijani relations and regional cooperation. It remains unclear whether these issues, including the outstanding humanitarian consequences of the Artsakh conflict, will feature in their upcoming discussions.