On a single afternoon in New York, the UN General Assembly contained two kinds of crisis. Inside the hall, Benjamin Netanyahu was still speaking when dozens of delegates rose from their seats and walked out. Outside, protesters had already been arrested. The scene captured, with unusual clarity, how fractured the international consensus over Gaza has become.

Netanyahu used his address to deny that Israel's military campaign in Gaza constitutes genocide — a charge that had been put to the same assembly the previous day by Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, among others. His rebuttal was met not only with the walkout but with formal right-of-reply speeches from the representatives of Iran, Turkey and Qatar, each of which condemned his remarks in turn. Whether such procedural counter-punches carry any practical weight is a question that haunts the General Assembly every year; for now, they serve chiefly as a record of disagreement. The contrast with Nepal's intervention could hardly have been sharper.

Four weeks after catastrophic flash floods tore through the Himalayan nation, Prime Minister Balendra Shah stepped to the podium and declined to deliver the standard speech about development and democratic progress. "I wish I could stand here today simply to speak about development, democracy, peace and the hopes of a young nation," he told delegates. "Instead, I must speak about death and destruction of epic proportions." He proposed a Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism, to be led jointly by Nepal, India and China, which would share satellite data, monitor glacial lakes, and coordinate cross-border disaster response.