UN General Assembly
2024

But the United Nations exists to ennoble the cruel Thucydean world, by securing legal equality among nations, taming the power of the great and protecting the small nations. This legal equality is a prerequisite for achieving the highest goals of the United Nations – peace and security, human rights and sustainable development. The United Nations exists to bridge, or at least narrow, the gap between the legal and the just. We are facing a big challenge: how can the legal become just, or how can the just become legal? And how can the legal and the just be implemented? Respected attendees, There are no simple, inexpensive and painless solutions to this dual challenge. Here, in this solemn hall of the General Assembly, for years, world leaders share their expectations and disappointments from the United Nations, which, not infrequently, oscillate between two extremes – utopian optimism, on the one hand, and nihilistic pessimism, on the other. Still, reality is complex and contains both successes and failures.