France and Liberia: A Diplomatic Moment in New York
An encounter between Emmanuel Macron and Joseph Nyuma Boakai offers a glimpse of the personal diplomacy taking place around UNGA81.
NEW YORK — September 2026
The United Nations General Assembly is defined publicly by speeches, but much of diplomacy happens elsewhere. It happens in corridors, bilateral meetings, receptions, side events and brief encounters between leaders whose countries may be separated by geography but connected through international institutions, economic interests and shared global challenges. During UNGA81 week in New York, French President Emmanuel Macron and Liberian President Joseph Nyuma Boakai were photographed together in an informal and notably warm encounter; an image captured by FQM that reveals a more personal dimension of international diplomacy.
There is no lectern in the photograph and no formal line of national flags separating the two leaders. Instead, the image captures an embrace amid the extraordinary concentration of presidents, ministers and diplomats that New York hosts during General Assembly week. Such moments may appear incidental beside formal summits and speeches, but personal contact remains an important part of diplomacy. International relationships are ultimately maintained not only through treaties, communiqués and institutions, but through repeated encounters among the people representing their countries.
The meeting is also interesting within the wider context of France’s evolving relationships across Africa. For decades, discussions of French engagement with the continent were frequently dominated by France’s relationships with its former colonies. Liberia occupies a very different historical position.
Founded in the nineteenth century in connection with the resettlement of formerly enslaved and free Black Americans, Liberia declared independence in 1847 and developed particularly strong historical ties with the United States. Contemporary France–Liberia engagement therefore belongs to a broader story of European countries building relationships across Africa beyond older colonial geographies, encompassing trade, investment, education, development, climate, security and culture.
Boakai’s presence in New York also extended into an area particularly relevant to FQM: cultural heritage. On September 23, he participated in Ghana’s high-level event on the return and restitution of cultural property, co-hosted by Ghana, Germany and France. There, the Liberian president proposed deeper cooperation between Liberia and Ghana in cultural heritage and historical recovery, including the digitization of historical documents, training of museum and archive professionals, preservation of historic sites and development of exhibitions and educational programs.
It is a reminder that international relationships are not built exclusively around economics and security. Archives matter. Museums matter. Universities matter. Historic sites matter. The preservation of collective memory can itself become an area of international cooperation, particularly as countries reconsider how cultural heritage can contribute to education, tourism, scholarship and national identity.
The great spectacle of the United Nations General Assembly naturally centers on the General Debate, where one leader after another walks to the same green marble rostrum to address the world. Around it, however, exists an enormous informal architecture of diplomacy; some encounters scheduled months in advance, others considerably more spontaneous. A handshake can open a conversation; a conversation can lead to another meeting; and relationships between governments are often sustained through these repeated points of contact.
The photograph captured by FQM in New York is valuable precisely because it records that quieter dimension. For a publication interested in culture and diplomacy, it is also a reminder that diplomacy is simultaneously institutional and personal. Governments negotiate. Institutions cooperate. But people still have to meet.
Diplomacy is built through agreements. It is sustained through relationships.
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