No millennial monolith as Gen Y leaders rise at UN

A young president at the U.N. General Assembly touted millennial status symbols like coffee, outdoor adventure and Bitcoin. Another admitted in front of the famous green marble that it was harder to govern a country than to protest in its streets. A foreign minister, once shunned for having only a bachelor’s degree, warned against indifference.

Shaped by the borderless internet, growing economic inequality and an increasingly dire climate crisis, the Generation Y cohort of presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and other “excellencies” is making their mark at the largest gathering of world leaders.

This week at the United Nations offers a glimpse of the latest generation of leaders in power, as a critical mass of them – born generally between 1981 and 1996 – are coming to represent countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Some millennial leaders were making their debuts at the 77-year-old diplomatic institution built in the aftermath of WWII, while there were other notables who didn’t show up but had already arrived on the world stage. Those include Kim Jong Un, who took over the reclusive North Korea in his 20s, and the 36-year-old Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who faced controversy recently for a video of her dancing at a private party that went viral.