UN General Assembly
2022

For the peoples of the world to be able to find the transformative solutions that the world so desperately needs, people must be able to challenge the status quo. They must be free to express their opinions and debate freely on even the most sensitive issues. They must also be free to create art, even if the art is distasteful. Those are the values that the defenders of Ukraine want to secure for their children. Those are the values that Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is demanding for the people of Belarus. Those values are being denied to Afghan women and girls under the Taliban regime. Those are the values that do not accept that Mahsa Amini was beaten to death in Iran for wearing a hijab incorrectly. Let us not forget that the Russian Government is guilty of horrific abuses not only on the international scene. Brave Russians resisters to Putin’s system and the thousands who showed up on the streets of Russia earlier this week are all subject to harsh punishments, wrongful imprisonment, persecution and often worse.