It is an immense honour for me to address the General Assembly at its seventy-fourth session. When the United Nations was established by our predecessors back in 1945 the main purpose was to reduce tensions and avert another conflict after the Second World War.
Today, our Organization faces the multiple challenges confronting humankind. The United Nations should give hope to the people of the world and be alive to the multifaceted issues through the promotion of safety, peace and security. The past seven decades have shown us that multilateralism is an essential ingredient of a peaceful world. In pursuing that mandate over the years, the United Nations has developed into an important organ for fostering collective action to respond to today’s global challenges. It is that collective endeavour that has brought about cooperation and supported a global economy aimed at lifting more than a billion people out of poverty.
However, as we are all aware, threats to peace and violent conflicts, including mass atrocities, still exist in different regions of the world. We note with sadness that some of those conflicts and other inhumane suffering are sponsored by those who believe they have the right to dictate and impose their ideologies on other nations of the world. We call upon the Secretary-General to act swiftly and discourage such behaviour because it is against the objectives of our Organization. We are all equal, irrespective of country size and economic power.
The States Members of the United Nations must speak in one voice to defuse all tensions, while encouraging dialogue and protecting civilians and the innocent victims of conflict. My plea is particularly directed to the regions of the world where there are still pockets of conflict. We should all work towards an integrated, prosperous, peaceful and multilateral world.
The urgency of the theme of the general debate for the seventy-fourth session of the General Assembly, “Galvanizing multilateral efforts for poverty eradication, quality education, climate action and inclusion”, cannot be overemphasized. In effect, the theme underscores and reiterates the inescapable need to make the United Nations even more relevant to all people at times like these.
We encourage the Secretariat to note the proposals made by the leaders of the world and put them into action. Humankind is looking to us to change its living landscape for a better future. It is imperative that we take up the multilateral agenda with a renewed commitment to ensuring peaceful, equitable and sustainable societies for future generations.
Most contemporary challenges such as terrorism, climate change, migration, transnational organized crime and many others, cannot be effectively addressed without multilateral cooperation. That will require the inclusion and participation of all Member States through cooperation, dialogue and the reform of existing organs where needed. We therefore implore the General Assembly to play its role in bridging the gaps and promoting collective action. That can be achieved only through close coordination and collaboration with the Organization and all its agencies to address all international issues that deserve our attention.
Globally, eradicating poverty remains our priority and a daunting challenge, especially in the face of climate change and food insecurity, to mention but a few obstacles. We acknowledge and appreciate the actions taken by the international community to mitigate the situation. We want to stress that more investment is required to build strong societies and social protection systems that will ensure the inclusion of special-interest groups affected by poverty. While we have a responsibility to channel a significant proportion of national expenditures into social protection programmes, developing countries actually need financing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in order to transform their economies and social fabric.
As an example, financing development for a country such as Eswatini may become challenging over time with global economic austerity. That reality places constraints on the extent to which our nation can mobilize resources for development at a time when massive investments are needed to achieve the SDGs by 2030. Eswatini is enhancing its resource mobilization strategies by exploring cooperation with the global community, and we seek the support of the United Nations in that endeavour. It is evident that the integration of African economies, through innovative approaches, creates many opportunities to achieve the SDGs. Such efforts are important in generating new ideas, projects and ways to enable voices to be heard and to drive innovation and promote development.
The recent launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area will greatly assist in the fight to eradicate poverty on the continent. Likewise, with the launch of the African E-trade platform anticipated in the next few weeks, we are confident that steps such as these will usher in a new era in the lives of our people. They will bring the impetus we need to change the landscape and economies of Africa. As a continent, we are focusing on building and growing our economies, and with those new initiatives well established, we will be able to increase our trade with the entire world and become self-sufficient. We therefore urge the United Nations to lend its full support to the initiatives launched by Africa to ensure that the continent improves the lives of its people and becomes the Africa we want.
The African continent continues to face challenges beyond conflict, and those are health issues, including diseases such as Ebola, HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and many others, and to overcome them we need significant funding. After making some progress in our fight against those pandemics, we are unfortunately sometimes confronted with new outbreaks, reversing the gains made. Yet our vision as African States is that all those epidemics should be eliminated so that we can focus on our development goals. Unfortunately, developing countries continue to face significant gaps in funding, making it difficult to adequately detect and respond to problems while still providing basic health services and building the capacity of the health sector.
Africa carries a high burden of malaria cases. Although there have been improvements, Africa needs additional funding if it is to make progress in eradicating malaria on the continent. The Kingdom of Eswatini is among 21 countries globally with the potential to reverse indigenous malaria transmission by 2020, thereby achieving the goal of malaria elimination. In my capacity as Chair of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance, I am delighted to announce that early this year we launched the End Malaria Fund, a public-private partnership aimed at closing the funding gap and putting an end to the disease by 2022. We are pleased to note that in the wake of Eswatini’s establishment of a malaria fund, many more African countries have followed suit and are actively launching similar funds. We are also proud to inform the world that the Kingdom continues to make progress in ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2022. However, we still need support in our prevention efforts and in prolonging the lives of those who are already living with the disease. We are grateful to the friends of the Kingdom who continue to support us in addressing those challenges, particularly the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. They support our initiatives to eliminate AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, while building stronger health systems that will enable us to achieve universal health coverage.
Climate change has serious implications for development prospects everywhere, and even more so on the African continent, where climate extremes have continued to intensify. As we have witnessed in the Southern African Development Community region, natural disasters know no boundaries, and the worst affected countries lack the resources and capacity adequate to ensuring preparedness and responding to the devastation and impact of such disasters, including with respect to infrastructure and lives lost. It is Eswatini’s view that countries should work together to devise sound contingency plans aimed, first, at establishing a permanent regional disaster fund to help create a cushion against the effects of natural disasters, and secondly, at setting up subregional humanitarian hubs that will be equipped to respond swiftly to disasters. That will mitigate the impact, save lives and ensure that the countries affected can recover rapidly. The price of not taking prompt action to address climate change is too high.
The Kingdom of Eswatini is fully involved in working towards a knowledge-based economy through science, technology and innovation infrastructure in a bid to facilitate research and enhance development. Our Royal Science and Technology Park is doing notable work in advancing scientific research and also promotes start-up enterprises and innovation labs. We appreciate the friends of the Kingdom of Eswatini who support us in those initiatives. We are still seeking more support to strengthen our knowledge-based programmes, as they will help us to attain our national Vision 2022 and the Sustainable Development Goals.
We are committed to becoming a leading pioneer and role model in achieving the SDGs in Africa. We remain confident that the SDGs and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 will continue to give us the proper guidance and the impetus we need to eradicate poverty and create inclusive and sustainable development for all. We commend the close partnership between the United Nations and the people of Eswatini, which guarantees that the SDGs are fully integrated into our planning processes. In that regard, we have launched a five-year strategic road map for the period from 2019 to 2023 that will ensure sustainable economic development, financial stability and growth, with a view to improving the quality of life of Emaswati. The road map outlines five key sectors based on their ability to grow our gross domestic product, create employment and mobilize revenue — manufacturing, agriculture, mining and energy, tourism and education, and information and communications technology.
No nation can develop beyond its educational capacity, particularly that of its teachers. As we all strive to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all, we must also give the necessary assistance to countries that need help in developing their educators’ capacities. In that regard, we must guarantee access to free and quality primary and secondary education, as well as affordable and inclusive vocational and technical education, while working to make opportunities available to disabled boys and girls. I am pleased to share with the global community that the Kingdom of Eswatini has embarked on those initiatives, and we are seeing positive results.
As we all know, young people face a variety of challenges that require a comprehensive, coordinated and multilateral response. We are a youthful world, with more than half the global population aged under 30. We therefore need strategies to encourage the labour market to absorb the growing young working class and ensure that it is appropriately trained for the needs of our markets. We also have to develop programmes aimed at increasing the opportunities for our young people to start their own businesses.
The United Nations bid to leave no one behind will remain elusive if we continue to deprive other nations of the world the opportunity to play a pivotal role in the affairs of this universal Assembly. We firmly believe that Taiwan is essential to the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Its inclusion is a crucial step in realizing the pledge stipulated in the preamble to resolution 70/1, adopted on 25 September 2015. We once again call on the United Nations to uphold the principle of universality, continue its multilateral efforts towards total inclusion and allow Taiwan to participate in relevant efforts on a dignified and equal footing.
I want to reiterate how keen my Kingdom is to prioritize the overall implementation of the 2030 Agenda and Africa’s Agenda 2063. Like other middle-income countries, one of the challenges we face is a decline in official development assistance due to our categorization, which has worked against our development and poverty-reduction efforts. To that end, we strongly advocate for a reassessment of realities on the ground when official development assistance is allocated to the countries most in need.
Finally, we pledge our support to an effective multilateralism aimed at ensuring inclusion, promoting quality education, peace and security for all and lifting countries up from all forms of poverty. Addressing all the challenges that the United Nations family is facing is our first commitment. We want to recognize the Secretary-General and his entire staff for continuing to steer the affairs of the Secretariat with a focused commitment to United Nations efforts in pursuit of global peace and security, equity, justice and inclusiveness in all matters of the Organization. We are firmly convinced that together we will overcome every issue that seems impossible, as we continue to strive for unity, solidarity and mutual benefit and, above all, to galvanize all our efforts to achieve a better world for everyone, everywhere.


Forty years ago, forty years after Europe had been divided between those with power — between those who never hesitated to use their power to the benefit of their own nations and to the detriment of others — 45 people from the Baltic
States sent out an appeal to the United Nations, the European Union and the countries involved. Their appeal, later known as the Baltic Appeal, carried the hope that multilateral cooperation based on the rule of law could deliver for the small occupied States located between the two global blocs — the liberal democratic world and the Soviet Union. Just 12 years later, the three Baltic States rejoined the world of free and independent States. This was a victory for democracy and multilateral cooperation.
This year, Estonia celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the Baltic Appeal by undertaking a responsibility that we could not even dream about during the occupation — becoming an elected member of the Security Council of the United Nations. We took this responsibility because we care. We care about the weaker and the weakest among States and within societies. We care about those whose voice needs amplification by the multilateral world in order to be heard. We care about nations facing genocide and we care about their women and children. We care about nations facing long-term conflicts and suffering from terror and we care about their generations of boys for whom the only known profession is that of a soldier. We care about nations facing extinction through a slow weapon of mass destruction — the climate catastrophe. We care about nations facing famine and famine-induced disturbances due to climate change. We care about nations depending on this multilateral cooperation, based on the rule of law, which is the United Nations. We care because we know that true harmony for humankind — which has not yet been achieved — depends on our capacity to show compassion for the fate of others.
Multilateralism is nothing but showing compassion for the fate of others. Compassion was shown to us when we regained our independence and rebuilt our State. We are now ready to return this compassion shown to us. We are ready to take an elected seat for the period of 2020-2021 behind the most difficult table of international cooperation — the Security Council. We are ready to serve our electorate and all others, too, as true service for humankind in a multilateral system always demands. We will talk with countries, not just about them.
Respect for the international rule of law and the efforts made by those who preceded us in implementing it will guide our actions, our decisions and our debates. We have nothing but respect for varied yet sincere positions and opinions on how to resolve the pressing issues we are facing to support our decision-making. Those steered by compassion for humankind and for the planet we inhabit can always rely on Estonia. The moral authority of the United Nations as the global carer for humankind is dear to our hearts.
We have a lot of long-standing and painful issues to tackle, such as the fate of women and children in conflict zones, but we also have new, emerging challenges related to new technologies. Estonia is to this day the world’s only digitally transformed nation, running its Government totally online, but many are following us into the cybersphere. New threats to our sovereignty are emerging, related to cybercrime, as well as cyberspace as the new military domain. While Estonia contributes globally to the leapfrogging efforts based on e-governance, we also recognize our responsibility to protect cyberspace as well. Hence, we are striving towards a better application of international law in the digital space, as well as in our work in the Security Council. Estonia has already declared its own intention to apply national and international law where cyberspace is concerned. We invite all nations to do the same in order to clarify how international law applies in the digital sphere.
We support and also actively participate in the reform efforts of the United Nations, led by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. We want the United Nations to be ready to lead in the twenty-first century, fully benefiting from the technological advances of humankind that have made it much easier for those who are not big and powerful — the majority of United Nations Member States — to follow and contribute to the Organization’s various bodies and numerous discussions.
We support the thematic consolidation of United Nations actions and regional focus on its aspirations, such as the High-Level Steering Group for Every Woman Every Child, or the better common management of United Nations actions in various countries. We also support those, like the African Union, that say they want to be much more independently responsible yet supported by the United Nations in taking steps towards a collective regional approach to long-standing problems.
Through the United Nations Development Fund, UNICEF and other United Nations bodies, we participate in resolving global miseries. We also strive to use our own development resources, leveraged by those of the European Union and the United Nations, to suggest State-building based on digital solutions, seeing the potential of the Internet and mobile access even among the poorest. It allows States to provide for their people, starting with population registries, effortless access to online birth registration and online learning tools for those whose access to classical schooling is limited by geography, ongoing conflict, social stigma or disability. We see the Internet as a wonderful tool for educating girls and offering jobs for women globally, thereby reducing global population growth by emancipating women.
We support the view that saving our planet is also the civic responsibility of each and every one of us. Nowadays, with the help of technology, we can shoulder this responsibility and feel the serious global effect of the action of each and every person. World Cleanup Day took place just last Saturday, when for the second year in a row the civil movement born in Estonia spread to 179 countries and territories, including Antarctica, and involved over 20 million people and counting.
Encouraged by this, the Estonian start-up sector underwrote a memorandum with global ambitions, promising to be climate neutral in all their actions by 2030. They bring some serious market power and start-up thinking to the table, including their ability to quickly and globally mobilize masses of people. Sometimes we associate their ability to change our world only with the negative — closed bubbles, an antagonistic debate style, disruption of work patterns and risks to our social service provision by allowing a global jobs market incompatible with our industrial era tax models. But this ability can also be used to mobilize the masses for good, making a real difference. Estonia’s pledge to become climate neutral is open to all start-ups and other green-minded companies ready to support grass-roots movements to save our planet. I urge everyone to join. Today, one week after initiating the process, the number of signatories has already more than doubled and spread beyond Estonia, now covering more than 70 companies across Europe.
We need these civic movements, among other things, to encourage policymakers to see that idealism and a readiness to act for the benefit of humankind today and the children yet to be born still exists. That allows us politicians to set aside resources for stopping climate change, which will inevitably reach and probably exceed 1 per cent of the global gross domestic product.
The main reason we are not globally efficient in putting existing technologies for green energy production into practice is due to the fragmentation of our actions. It is an obstacle to global grid development and it is an obstacle to harnessing solar energy for the benefit of us all, even though we know that a surface smaller than the territory of Spain is all we need to cater for the global energy needs of us all. It is an obstacle to making each and every microgrid globally rely on renewables and to developing access to electricity among those who currently have none.
Only the United Nations can help us overcome this fragmentation. We welcome the first global Climate Action Summit as a sign that the United Nations is ready for this challenge.
Climate change remains the greatest existential challenge that the world is facing. In this light, it is disturbing to note that we still keep subsidizing, to the tune of trillions of dollars, its source — the fossil fuel industry.
The destructive force of climate change is not evenly distributed around the world. Some places are more vulnerable than others. However, no place on Earth will be untouched, and none of us can escape it. Many people across the globe are already experiencing threats regard to their livelihoods and, indeed, lives.
The Himalayan glaciers have been melting at double the rate since the turn of this century, threatening water supplies throughout Central, South and East Asia. Arctic permafrost is melting decades earlier than even worst-case scenarios had predicted, threatening to unlock vast amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
Many people in small island developing States live in constant fear of inundation by rising seas. The situation will only get worse unless we address it now, with ambition and urgency. Yet our efforts and progress are far from being sufficient to avert the obvious adverse effects of this global crisis, a crisis that no country can solve alone. Security issues related to climate change are addressed further by the Group of Friends on Climate and Security, in which Estonia participates.
Science tells us that climate change is happening and imminent, and it also indicates the best practices to tackle it. In our quest for the best solutions, we must rely on science. There is a common perception that replacing fossil fuels with biomass is carbon-neutral, whereas science has told us that this is not entirely correct.
Renewable energy is not necessarily carbon-neutral. In fact, burning wood can actually increase carbon dioxide emissions and would make it even harder for us to reach climate-neutrality goals by mid-century. Instead, it is more efficient to use wood for making products, which is not only carbon-neutral but carbon-positive, as such products store carbon for their entire lifetime. We in Estonia appreciate this, and every fourth wooden house exported globally is made by Estonians.
Climate change and environmental degradation is an area where we need to share collective responsibility. In this battle we are all on the same side; that is the only way we can win. We have one good example from the past where our collective efforts once paid off. It was back in 1987, when we agreed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out numerous substances that were responsible for its depletion. As a result, the ozone hole in Antarctica has been slowly healing.
Next year we will be celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations. I would encourage us all to take the 12 months leading up to the birthday party as an opportunity to think about what we can do, both individually and jointly, to safeguard and strengthen the United Nations and multilateralism.
The reality is simple; this global, interlinked and globally warming world cannot survive unless our goodwill and positive actions go beyond the artificial limitations created by the various fragmentations of global society, which from the viewpoint of humankind as a whole are artificial — fragmentations that have dogged us and keep dogging us.
It is the lack of true multilateralism and of true and idealistic thinking for the benefit of humankind as a whole that continues to undermine the positive effects of our global efforts. We must overcome this obstacle, and the United Nations is our tool to do so. This tool has to be sharpened, it has to be supported by new technologies, and it has to be connected to civil societies through digital means, allowing individual efforts to join with global movements; but it can never be replaced.


It is an honour for me to once again address the Assembly, a few months before completing my first term as President, in order to share the path that Argentina has taken regarding its links with international society. That path has been characterized by the constructive role we have played in collectively addressing global challenges, focusing on the quest for consensus and collective action, acting in the belief that the world as a whole represents much more of an opportunity than a threat, and working to build international trust, diversify our partners, expand spaces for cooperation and seek areas in which Argentina can play a relevant and leading role. And most importantly, it is a path that aligns with the deep desire of Argentine society to take its place in the international order of the twenty-first century, because we are a diverse, multicultural country in which different origins, beliefs and religions coexist peacefully in a pluralistic identity, and because we value dialogue and respect as ways of building a shared future.
Beginning in 2015, when I took office as President, we made a decision to leave behind the preceding period of confrontation with the world and work in an intelligent way to integrate ourselves internationally. In a complex global context full of uncertainties and growing geopolitical tensions, we decided to take responsibility and contribute to strengthening multilateralism and global governance. That has been reflected in the meetings of the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in 2017, the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in 2018 and the Second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation, all held in Argentina within the past three years. Those three events put Argentina on the world stage and brought the world to Argentina, where we demonstrated our ability to cooperate in building an international order that includes all of us. But our responsibility to multilateralism and seeking consensus has gone much further. Over the past few years, Argentina has also reinforced its positive role in strengthening international peace and security, contributing to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, space development and the fight against terrorism and transnational organized crime, among many other things.
We want to once again express here our firm commitment to non-proliferation, which has been a pillar of democratic consensus in recent decades in Argentina and has guided our development of nuclear technology. In 2020 my country will preside over the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and we also hope to make a contribution through our candidate for the position of Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Argentina’s commitment to combating terrorism in all its forms is greater than ever, and was reflected this year in our organization of the Second Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial Conference. With the support of other countries and international organizations, we have strengthened the exchange of information and measures for preventing terrorism financing. We also created a database to expedite the freezing of assets suspected of being linked to terrorists, which, for example, enabled the Argentine Financial Information Unit to freeze assets of persons and entities related to Hizbullah.
Despite all of those efforts, we Argentines still have open wounds. We continue to fight the impunity that has persisted for the attacks we suffered in 1992 on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and in 1994 at the headquarters of the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association, which took the lives of 107 people and left hundreds more wounded. We want all those involved in perpetrating the attacks to be brought before Argentine courts so that they can be tried and ultimately sentenced. Twenty-five years after the most brutal terrorist attack ever experienced on our territory, we once again urge the Islamic Republic of Iran to cooperate with the Argentine judicial authorities to advance the investigation of the attack on the Association. And we reiterate our call for cooperation from friendly countries to prevent the accused from being hosted or sheltered under diplomatic immunity.
Since assuming the presidency of Argentina, I have wasted no time in advancing the fight against drug trafficking and money-laundering. We have increased the amount of drugs seized, stepped up captures of national and international fugitives, dismantled criminal drug networks and reduced the number of homicides linked to drug trafficking throughout the country. Last year, for example, we immobilized more than 500 billion Argentine pesos, around $8.5 billion, linked to organized crime. We also speeded up the process of bringing money-laundering and corruption cases to trial and seized goods and property belonging to those accused of such crimes. We also continue to work with other Governments in Latin America and the Caribbean on reaching the consensus needed to create a regional legal body capable of addressing this and other types of transnational organized crime.
In the past few years, we have demonstrated a renewed and ambitious commitment in the fight against climate change and dedicated ourselves to sustainable development. We are aware of the climate emergency, and we must act in accordance with the commitments of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. That is why we have taken the decision to implement a plan for a long-term low-emission strategy that will enable us to take the necessary steps to achieve more ambitious targets, such as carbon neutrality by the year 2050. That initiative is underpinned by the efforts that we are already making today, for example with regard to cleaner energy — particularly renewable energy — energy efficiency, the conservation of ecosystems, doubling the area of national parks, creating marine protected areas, caring for our forests and increasing our afforestation efforts, capturing carbon in our soil, promoting technologies for sustainable agriculture and good livestock practices and reducing emissions in the transport sector.
During these past few years, equality between women and men has been much more than a mere slogan in Argentina. We have been firmly committed to continuing to empower girls and women and eliminate gaps in employment, education and political participation. We have implemented a plan for equal opportunities and rights and built a system aimed at preventing women from becoming victims of violence as well as assisting such victims. We have established a parity law for posts in the legislature and designed our national budget with an egalitarian strategy in mind. We know that much remains to be done, but we are sure that there will be no going back on the rights and opportunities that women have in my country today.
For a more efficient multilateral system and global governance and a safer and more peaceful world, we need regions that are more stable, better integrated with one another and connected to the rest of the world. We therefore decided to make a firm commitment to the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), thereby confirming the importance that we have attached to regional integration since day one of our Administration. Through the four members’ concerted efforts we have set in motion a plan to adapt it to the twenty-first century so that it can be a competitive and dynamic bloc with clear rules of the game. We have given our internal and external agendas a renewed, ambitious boost with concrete actions and achievements designed to benefit our citizens. After more than 20 years of negotiations, we have reached an agreement with the European Union that is unprecedented for both trade blocs and hugely important globally. It will enable us to enhance trade and investment with positive effects for our people’s quality of life. And while that in itself is an important step, what is most relevant, as in life in general, is the direction taken, which is towards a MERCOSUR that is modern and open to the world.
I firmly believe that a country’s path to global integration requires core values guiding its action. Our history and geography unite us in a region that deeply values democracy, freedom and human rights both as a way of life and for peaceful coexistence. That is why, since the beginning of our Administration, we have led the condemnation of the very serious situation of human rights violations in Venezuela, as evidenced in the annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (A/HRC/41/18/ Add.1). The dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro has plunged Venezuela into an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. The mass exodus of millions of Venezuelans has seriously affected the stability and governance of our region. I want to once again call on the international community to use all available diplomatic and legal tools to reverse this situation so that Venezuela can be free and democratic once more.
Argentina reaffirms its legitimate and imprescriptible sovereign rights over the Malvinas, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime areas, and we maintain our position and call for the United Kingdom to resume bilateral negotiations that will enable us to find a peaceful and definitive solution to the dispute. We have nevertheless created a new relationship framework with the United Kingdom, thereby improving the conditions for moving towards a solution. Part of this, working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, was to identify the majority of Argentine soldiers buried in the Darwin cemetery, thereby paying a historic debt to their families. We have also resumed scientific cooperation in the fisheries sector, including by carrying out joint scientific maritime missions, and we have promoted greater rapprochement between the islands and continental Argentina by establishing a new weekly flight to the Malvinas.
Before concluding, I want to convey to the Assembly that today, in the uncertain situation that we Argentines are facing, my absolute priority is to be there for all of them and bring them relief to get through these difficult times. But without wanting to neglect that responsibility, I decided to come to share with the Assembly this assessment of Argentina’s international integration over the past four years. Because amid the current trends of fragmentation, I believe that the best response enabling us to move towards a prosperous future is greater cooperation and more and better multilateralism. Because I am convinced that in order to grow and develop, to have the life that we Argentines deserve, we must be better integrated into the world and deploy all of our labour and talent to that end. I know we can do it. It depends on us.


Next year, we will celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, which was born from the ashes of the Second World War to maintain peace and promote prosperity and human rights for future generations. The Organization was created to resolve differences, prevent violent conflicts, learn lessons from the past and meet international threats through cooperation. It was established to enable nations, no matter their size, to achieve these goals by acting together. The anniversary is an opportunity to celebrate many significant achievements — most recently, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and the sustaining peace agenda.
At the same time, the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, such as the World Trade Organization and the International Criminal Court, are increasingly being questioned. This is a disturbing trend that threatens to weaken international cooperation, accountability and our nations’ growth, trade and development.
The climate crisis is the defining issue of our time. Millions of young people are now demonstrating and demanding urgent action. Their commitment and engagement have inspired school strikes and protests around the world. They have left few of us unmoved. Their voice was raised, once again, loud and clear at last Saturday’s youth summit. We must not let them down. We cannot let them down.
To keep global warming under 1.5°C and prevent the most extreme impacts of climate change, we need to halve global emissions by 2030. Scientists, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change included, warn of devastating consequences if we do not take immediate action.
Climate change is a driver of conflict. Action is about the survival of our peoples and our nations. The world cannot afford the cost of inaction. The challenge facing us is enormous, but we can turn this challenge into an opportunity.
I would like to raise two main points. First, we need long-term policy at all levels. The European Union has put in place a legally binding climate framework, sending a clear message to the international community about our commitment. In Sweden, our Climate Act and net-zero emissions target also send a clear signal. But we can and will do more. Our goal is to be the first fossil-free welfare nation in the world. At the Climate Action Summit, together with India and the World Economic Forum, we announced the launch of the Leadership Group for Industry Transition. This initiative will speed up industry transition to pathways that will ensure that we deliver on the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda. The role of trade and labour unions is essential in this transition.
Secondly, transforming financial flows is key. We are proud to see the commitment of our businesses and financial institutions to aligning with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Through our development cooperation, Sweden is investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate-sensitive agriculture. We are the world’s leading per-capita contributor to the Green Climate Fund and have now decided to double that contribution.
Today, in many parts of the world, democracy is losing ground. Inequalities are growing. Social and economic gaps are feeding into nationalistic narratives. Anti-democratic forces are creating uncertainty and division. Corruption is a threat to democracy, to economic and social development, and to trade and investment. Together, we must do more to counter these forces because democracy is the bedrock of open and free societies, and of equality and prosperity. Democracy invites all citizens to take part in building sustainable societies and societies free from oppression. Sweden will increase its support for democratic and vibrant civil societies. Voices of democracy need our support.
Human rights around the world are under attack. We must act against all attempts to weaken the respect for human rights and restrict their universality. Sweden will continue to be a strong voice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. No one should suffer discrimination, violence or oppression because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Sweden will continue to champion the independence and integrity of the human rights system. Persecution of religious and other minorities occurs in many parts of the world, which is unacceptable. Sweden is strengthening efforts against anti-Semitism. Next year, we will host an international forum on Holocaust remembrance and combating anti-Semitism.
We will continue to protest when the freedom of expression is restricted, whether online or off, when journalists and media actors are silenced, and when human rights defenders are harassed or even killed.
I am proud to be the Foreign Minister in Sweden’s feminist Government and to pursue a feminist foreign policy. Gender equality is an issue that concerns us all. It is about human rights, democracy, development and peace and security for all. We are encouraged by the considerable advances made in certain areas, but progress remains uneven. Every day, in many parts of the world, women’s and girls’ rights are still being violated.
We are also witnessing growing opposition to women’s and girls’ human rights. This must stop. Every woman and girl should have the right to make her own decisions about her body and her life. These are basic human rights. Sexual and reproductive health and rights, including the right to safe and legal abortion, are fundamental human rights.
Next year marks the anniversaries of several gender-equality commitments. The tasks laid out in those commitments remain unfinished and need our urgent attention. Implementing the women, peace and security agenda and the Beijing Platform for Action is not only the right thing to do but it is also key to achieving sustainable peace and development. On International Women’s Day this year, Sweden and France launched a diplomatic initiative to combat trafficking and prostitution, focusing on reducing demand and protecting the victims of prostitution, in Europe and globally.
Empowering women and increasing their political and economic participation are crucial for global development. Sweden fully supports the ongoing efforts of the United Nations to mainstream a gender perspective throughout the United Nations system and its reform agenda. The Secretary-General’s determination to ensure gender parity in the Organization is an important part of these efforts.
In adopting the 2030 Agenda, we all committed to taking on significant responsibilities. I am pleased that the political declaration adopted earlier this week (resolution 74/4, annex) not only reinforces the 2030 Agenda, but also sets the course for faster action on the Sustainable Development Goals. The United Nations plays a central role in this endeavour. With the reforms initiated by the Secretary-General, the United Nations will become more effective and enable action on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Sweden will continue to allocate 1 per cent of its gross national income as official development assistance. At present, more than 50 per cent of this assistance is channelled to or through the multilateral system. This demonstrates our strong commitment to international cooperation and the importance we attach to the 2030 Agenda for our shared future.
I am encouraged by the high level of engagement from the business sector. Together, as partners, we will achieve the Goals. The business benefits of science-based climate action are clear. We look forward to the launch of the Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance in October.
Trade is an important tool for sustainable economic development and poverty reduction, and for the 2030 Agenda as a whole. We need more trade, not less. A strong rules-based and transparent multilateral trading system is vital. Support to developing countries to increase their capacity for international trade is also crucial. Free trade is a powerful engine for growth. We need to make growth sustainable and inclusive and to promote decent work for all. Sweden will continue to be an active partner in the Global Deal for Decent Work and Inclusive Growth partnership, with its vision of a world of decent work and inclusive growth that guarantees workers’ rights.
Security must be built collectively. Current security threats leave no nation or person untouched. Sweden’s membership in the Security Council focused on conflict prevention, early action and respect for international law. Our membership has ended but our commitment is ongoing.
This week, Sweden co-hosted a meeting with key partners in support of peace in Yemen, based on the Stockholm Agreement. The United Nations-led process is key. We emphasize that international law must be respected. International law serves as a basis for conflict resolution and prevention, as in the case of Israel and Palestine. An end to the occupation together with a two-State solution within secure and mutually recognized borders is the only way to resolve this conflict.
The illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol and the aggression in eastern Ukraine challenge core principles of international law. We will continue to work with international partners until Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty have been fully restored.
The Security Council needs to adopt a comprehensive approach to peace, and to include new risks, such as climate change, on its agenda.
We are a year away from the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the cornerstone of the global nuclear-disarmament and non-proliferation regime. The Treaty has been successful in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. However, the deteriorating international security environment has once again increased the threat of the use of nuclear weapons.
The situation on the Korean peninsula remains a cause for concern. We must continue to pursue our common goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization and of peace and reconciliation on the Korean peninsula through diplomatic means.
We need full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. We must act urgently and pursue dialogue to restore trust, which is presently lacking in this part of the international arena.
The termination of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, essentially as a result of Russian non-compliance, is a further setback. In June, Sweden, together with 15 countries from various regions, launched a nuclear-disarmament initiative. This initiative aims at building political support for a successful outcome of the NPT Review Conference in 2020. Concrete measures to reduce nuclear risk and increase transparency can serve as stepping stones and unlock disarmament diplomacy. Full and constructive engagement by nuclear-weapon States will be a necessary ingredient if we wish to move forward.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is an essential part of the NPT. On 23 September, Sweden took over as Chair of the Agency’s Board of Governors for the 2019-2020 period. We are honoured to shoulder this great responsibility in these challenging times.
Millions of people are struggling to survive and live just another day. Currently over 140 million people need life-saving humanitarian assistance, most of whom are women and girls. Sweden is proud to be one of the largest contributors of humanitarian assistance in the world in order to save lives and ease human suffering. We stand behind the Secretary-General’s vision that tensions and crises can be prevented from escalating into major conflicts.
The role that the United Nations plays in resolving conflicts, through political and diplomatic efforts or peace operations, is crucial for securing inclusive and sustainable peace. Post-conflict reconstruction can be successful only when all segments of society are included. This is especially important when it comes to women’s participation. We are firmly committed to supporting the Secretary-General’s initiative to strengthen peacekeeping. We will continue our engagement in the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali and other peace operations.
The late poet Claes Andersson once wrote: “Fear those who say they only want to be left alone — for they fear no means.” History has shown us that isolationism, populism and nationalism are all paths to failure. Sweden’s foreign policy rests firmly on democracy, international law, respect for human rights, gender equality, a humanitarian perspective, and free, fair and sustainable trade.
The United Nations system is a global public good, and it is in our shared strategic interest to keep investing in it. The long-term gains are far greater than any short-term costs. The prosperity of one nation is not part of a zero-sum game in which nations either win or lose. On the contrary, we can and must choose a path that will ensure that we continue to rise together.


This week leaders from around the world will stand before members, here in this great General Assembly Hall, to take part in the general debate of its seventh-fourth session. We come here in recognition of a simple reality — the General Assembly is vital to meet the dangers and seize the opportunities of our world.
Collective action — that is the promise of the United Nations. Nearly 75 years ago, this Organization was created by the specific, individual actions of Member countries, coming together to shape a better future, and today we still urgently need each and every Member country to act, and to act together, with our global neighbours and achieve the better, safer world all of us need.
For if we do not act, what hope do we have? What will our future look like if millions of the world’s young people continue to be denied the rich fruits of new technology and global wealth? Can we afford to ignore the crisis of exclusion? Or will we do the right thing, support the energies and talents of all the world’s youth and drive all economies forward, through fair and inclusive global growth? What will our world look like if we do not work together for a healthy and safe environment? Water-scarce countries like Jordan already know the dangers of climate change. A global crisis demands global action. How can we excuse delay?
Let us ask ourselves why, in the twenty-first century, crises are still displacing millions of people across our world. There are more forced displacements today than at any time since the Second World War. What will tomorrow’s world look like if we do not help end those crises and give refugees and hosts alike the support they need to meet the future?
How is it that people today can still be disrespected and victimized for their faith? Atrocities at mosques, churches, synagogues and temples have shocked the conscience of the world, but so should the dark, criminal ideas, from across the ideological spectrum, that drive those and other attacks. Hard work by all of us is needed to defeat those groups and their message of hate and mistrust, but no effort stands a chance unless young men and women everywhere have a stake in a positive future. The forces of violence seek out the vulnerable and excluded. Can we afford to abandon the world’s young people to extremism and despair?
Collective action is also vital for ending bitter crises and conflict, and no crisis has done more global damage than the core conflict in my region, the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. Neither side has achieved the durable peace that a secure future depends on, while regional and world stability have continued to pay the price.
It is a terrible irony that a land holy to three faiths that share the great commandment to love one’s neighbour should ever be a place of conflict. That is the land where prophets have walked and where generations of Muslims, Christians and Jews have sought to live in obedience to God, teaching their children compassion, mercy and respect for others. Segregation, forced displacement, violence and mistrust do not belong in that Holy Land.
Forty years ago my father, His Majesty the late King Hussein, who loved peace, stood in this very Hall and decried the occupation and attempts “to eradicate from the world’s memory centuries of history and tradition and of spiritual, moral and cultural ideals” (A/34/PV.7para. 22).
It is a global moral tragedy that the occupation continues, yet no occupation, no displacements, no acts of force can erase people’s history, hopes or rights or change the true heritage of our shared values among the three monotheistic faiths — and nothing can take away the international rights of the Palestinian people to equality, justice and self-determination.
Young people ask me, Why does the world not stand up for Palestinian rights? Is it not time to answer them by showing that global justice and human rights belong to them too? It begins with respect for the holy sites and rejecting all attempts to alter the legal status of East Jerusalem and the authentic historical character of the Holy City, Jerusalem. What lessons do we teach young people when armed personnel enter Al-Aqsa Mosque/Haram Al-Sharif, even as Muslim worshippers gather to pray? As a Hashemite Custodian, I am bound by a special duty to protect Jerusalem’s Islamic and Christian holy sites, but all of us have a reason and a moral obligation to uphold religious freedom and human rights. Let us therefore safeguard the Holy City for all humankind as a unifying city of peace.
We must also press forward towards an end to the conflict and a just, lasting and durable peace through the realization of the two-State solution — a solution that is in accord with international law and the relevant United Nations resolutions, provides an end to conflict and creates a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian State, on the 4 June 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital and living side by side with Israel in mutual peace and security.
The two-State solution is the only genuine solution, because what is the alternative — one State, segregated, with unequal laws, dependent on force, betraying the deepest values of the good people on both sides? That is a formula for enduring conflict, not a path to stability, security and peace.
Tolerance, compassion and the equality of all human beings are the values that make global harmony and collective action possible. Those are the values that permeate the Charter of the United Nations — to live together in peace as good neighbours, to honour the rights and equality of all and to combine our efforts and unite our strengths, not only in order to maintain peace and security but also to improve human life through justice, prosperity and greater hope for humankind.
Those are the moral obligations that the United Nations founders set forth. Now they are our responsibility. We must not fail. May peace and God’s mercy be upon everyone.


Denmark is an old nation, full of new ideas. We may not be a big country, but we have big ambitions. In today’s world I believe we need both new ideas and big ambitions if we are to solve the issues facing us, including climate change, delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and ensuring fair globalization.
We live in a world smaller than ever before, a world where our futures are bound together as at no other time in human history, an unpredictable world where the growing interdependency of nations and peoples has made international cooperation more necessary than ever before. And yet today’s headlines are overflowing with ideas of division, exit, unilateralism and self-interest. While it is paradoxical that such ideas are thriving precisely when they are least needed, it would be a critical mistake to dismiss them as irrational or irrelevant. We, the decision-makers of the world, must understand the realities and perceptions that have caused such ideas to grow.
The rules-based international order has fostered globalization, giving many of us a world of opportunities and social progress and a belief that tomorrow will be better than today. Enormous wealth has been created, but it is not fairly shared. Not all have shared in the benefits of globalization or been shielded from its negative sides. When some of the wealthiest companies and individuals in the world break their societal contract, when they do not pay their fair share of taxes, how can we in fairness ask those of lesser means to do so? We must ensure that everyone carries the burden, especially those with the broadest shoulders. We must fight for fair and sustainable globalization. That requires a global approach. Denmark believes in multilateralism and in the inherent value of universally agreed rights, standards and obligations. The SDGs and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change serve as our common point of departure. They prove that we can still deliver ambitions and plans as a global community. But now multilateralism must deliver more than plans and ambitions. We must deliver action.
The SDGs are not only a vision of the world we want. They are also a blueprint for how we get there. It remains the primary responsibility of countries to deliver the SDGs at home, but no one should face the responsibility alone or find that a sincere request for help goes unanswered. We clearly live in a world where solidarity is needed, and not just words of solidarity. For more than 40 years, Denmark has delivered on its promise made in this Hall (resolution 2626 (XXV)), providing at least 0.7 percent of our wealth in official development assistance. We are proud to maintain that dedication on the road to 2030.
“We the peoples” are the first words of the Charter of the United Nations. Our efforts must similarly start and end with the peoples. That means doing our utmost to solve what the Secretary-General has rightly called the defining issue of our time. Getting the climate under control can no longer be the problem of the next generation or even the next Government. It is up to us. The time is now, and action is needed. Denmark has set one of the most ambitious climate targets in the world, a 70 per cent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030 and climate neutrality with net-zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. Make no mistake, that will not be easy. We have a massive task ahead of us. But Denmark is determined to be a leader in the fight against climate change.
Denmark would like to thank the Secretary-General for hosting the Climate Action Summit. We were proud and honoured to co-lead the energy transition track for the Summit. Together with Ethiopia and Sustainable Energy for All, and joined by a cross-regional coalition, we have focused our energy on energy. The reason is obvious. Energy accounts for roughly 80 per cent of global carbon-dioxide emissions. We need to scale up renewable energy. We need to increase energy efficiency. We need to electrify the industries that today rely on fossil fuels. But let me be clear. Almost 1 billion people are currently living without electricity. The clean- energy transition will be neither socially sustainable nor fair if we leave those people in the dark. We have to fulfil the promise of SDG 7 on delivering affordable and clean energy to all. We must leave no one behind on our path to a carbon-neutral world, at peace with the planet. Nor can we address climate change effectively without protecting the natural environment. Deforestation and forest fires in the Amazon and across the planet are global climate crises and must be addressed as such. Denmark is committed to reducing deforestation and is ready to assist if needed and requested.
While Governments must lead in this journey, we cannot walk alone. Partnerships with all relevant actors are crucial if we want to meet the ambitious goals that we have agreed to so that we can meet a deadline that has been set not by us, but by the planet. In true partnership, Denmark intends to work with the international investment community to mobilize much- needed private capital for green energy by 2020. At the Climate Action Summit, we were proud to announce that Danish pension funds are also taking action, committing the Danish people’s hard-earned savings to significant new international green-energy investments. We also announced our intention to double our support to the Green Climate Fund. And our industries are committed too. The Getting to Zero Coalition, which includes the Danish shipping company Maersk and other partners, illustrates how shipping is showing leadership. With the aim of creating carbon-neutral vessels as early as 2030, the Coalition is bringing together the entire value chain. We must ensure that the ships connecting our world are not a danger to our planet.
But partnerships must not only be built across sectors and across borders. They must also be forged across generations. We must include young people, and we must empower them and hear their voices. We must enable their action so that they can shoulder their part of the responsibility to deliver on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. And our youth will deliver if they are given access to the quality education we promised them. They will need an education not only to learn but also, as the Secretary-General has said, to learn to learn. Technological advancements, not least in the private sector, have provided extraordinary tools and possibilities. But only together can the public and private sectors lift future generations to levels of education unimaginable today. Not only because it is right, but because we need the innovative and pioneering thinking of future generations to ensure a world that continues to prosper. To quote a young Danish delegate who attended the Youth Climate Summit last Saturday, “We want you to hear us when we say we want to be part of the solution. We know our climate is threatened, we know what needs to be done. But we also know that none of us can make the needed changes on our own.”
Let us show the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of young people who have taken to the streets recently to protest for climate action that we are listening. And let us do more than that. Let us act. We owe it to them. It is our common responsibility.
“We the peoples” means a just world where harmful social and economic inequalities are abolished, where decent jobs are available to all and universal human rights prevail without discrimination of any kind. It certainly does not mean “we the men”. Today I am addressing the Assembly as the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Denmark, but also as a proud father of two wonderful little girls. Since we opened the seventy-fourth session, more than 300,000 girls have been born — ideally into a world of no discrimination, but in reality into a world where actively promoting gender equality and the right of every woman to make decisions about her own body is seen as a battleground.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights are fundamental for all women and girls, no matter where they are born. The fight for the rights of women and girls is an everyday part of Denmark’s policy as a member of the Human Rights Council, in the General Assembly Hall and as an incoming member of the Commission on the Status of Women. Later this year, together with Kenya and the United Nations Population Fund, Denmark will proudly chair a conference in Nairobi to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Cairo Programme of Action. It is high time that we delivered on the promise made 25 years ago and ensured that these rights can become a reality for all, not just a privilege for some.
As I mentioned, Denmark has worked in close partnership with Ethiopia on energy and with Kenya on gender equality, in two examples of the partnerships across regions that we need to ensure sustainable development for all. We must realize the full potential of all continents, including Africa, where a proud history, natural wealth and a young, energetic population form a powerful base for progress. Denmark will support closer partnerships between our continents on multiple issues, including trade, development and stabilization.
All States have a responsibility to prevent conflict and protect people. Hiding behind sovereignty while committing crimes is not acceptable. That is why Denmark supports the Secretary-General’s focus on prevention, early response to conflicts and the inclusion of regional actors. We remain concerned about the serious threat to regional security posed by the recent attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. Denmark calls for dialogue, restraint and de-escalation.
Denmark has contributed significantly to the Peacebuilding Fund and we will continue to support the training and education of United Nations peacekeepers. More than 50,000 Danish women and men have served in peacekeeping operations since the creation of the United Nations. Even as I speak, my countrymen and -women are hard at work in challenging operations from Mali to the Middle East, serving “we the peoples”.
To deliver on global challenges, we need a strong United Nations that is fit for purpose. Denmark continues to be a steadfast supporter of all three reforms initiated by the Secretary-General. The next year will be about implementation. Across all those reforms, we will focus on the ability to deliver on core challenges. Our embassies will engage in implementation and maintain a close dialogue with the United Nations teams on the ground. We urge the Secretary-General to ensure a human rights-based approach to all areas of the work of the United Nations. It is more important than ever to promote a culture of human rights within the United Nations. Alarms about serious human rights violations around the world must always be heard across the Secretariat and at its top as well.
Our ability to deliver as “we the peoples” will determine whether people will continue to look to this Organization for answers and solutions. In order to continue to be the place for solving the global issues of our times, the United Nations — all of us, that is — must deliver on climate action, sustainable development, human rights and peace and security. We know the challenges and we know what is needed. Now let us show the necessary will and act together.


It is a pleasure for me at the outset to extend to President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande my most sincere congratulations on his outstanding election to the presidency of the General Assembly at its seventy-fourth session. I take this opportunity to assure him of my full support for him in the discharge of his mandate.
I wish also to pay well-deserved tribute to Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces for the excellent work she did during her term, which will go down in history as a successful presidency. Her unflagging energy and effectiveness do honour to all women.
We live in a world that is replete with of challenges of all kinds — inequality, armed conflict, terrorism and violent extremism, global warming, natural disasters, intolerance and the phenomenon of migration. A world that is more just and characterized by greater solidarity has always been one of my aspirations, first as a young revolutionary student and later as a political activist, at a time where the dream of a better world was our raison d’être. I often look back with nostalgia at that time, when we put human beings, their future and their status at the heart of our concerns. A sense of ethics and moral considerations were fundamental to our system of values.
But everything is different today; why and how did we lose sight of our values and reach a point where we no longer respect anything or anyone? Our situation today is a reflection of that transformation. Look at how we treat our fellow human beings, be they migrants or religious or ethnic minorities; what has happened to us? We forget that we are all here only temporarily and that our mission and duty is to protect and respect our neighbour and to preserve this Earth, which we inherited from our ancestors and which we must in turn pass on to future generations.
We must get back to our values. A perfect world is perhaps a pipe dream. But if each and every one of us takes a step with the goal of improving our welfare and that of our brothers and sisters, a better world is possible. For my part, I have tried to make my modest contribution throughout my life, particularly since my election to lead my country. Throughout my life it has been my ambition to contribute fully to a more just Guinea, one with greater solidarity, where all citizens, irrespective of their background or social status, can flourish in a healthy environment. The first years were hard; the coffers of the State were empty, and our country found no sympathetic ear at, or credibility with, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or other international organizations. We had to set out on the long and difficult path of negotiating and convincing. We managed to cancel the debt and make the necessary reforms. For example, we had to force more than 4,000 army officers into retirement. We had to make difficult choices and give the country a boost in the context of the emergence of Ebola. We went through a very difficult period that we overcame thanks to the sense of responsibility and collaboration of all Guineans, to whom I pay tribute. Believe me, they are a great people who have always had the courage to get themselves back on their feet.
Putting Guinea back on the investors’ map has not been easy either, but today we are at last seeing strong growth in private investment in Guinea across all sectors. With regard to the fight against poverty, the Guinean Government has established national agencies for financing local authorities and social inclusion, which are facilitating a better distribution of wealth, particularly through the allocation of 15 per cent of mining revenues to local authorities and direct cash transfers to vulnerable populations in remote areas of the country.
Since I have dedicated my mandate to young people and women, their participation in the decision-making process is central to our Government’s actions. The establishment of a microcredit programme has enabled the transfer to women of more than 100 billion Guinean francs in the form of revolving credit. We have built modern empowerment centres for women and thousands of women are benefiting from training across every sector. In the field of employment, 6,857 women were recruited into the civil service between 2010 and 2018. In the agricultural sector, 3,314 women farmers have been trained in improved agricultural production techniques. Those measures naturally also benefit people with disabilities, who are encouraged to participate in active working life. In terms of the environment and the fight against global warming, Guinea has committed to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 13 per cent, and a vast reforestation programme covering 2 million hectares throughout Guinea’s territory is planned by 2030.
Gender equality is one of my Government’s priorities. In addition to ensuring parity in school and university enrolment, as well as the elimination of early marriage and other discriminatory practices, I want to emphasize projects that will help women to become self-sufficient economically, keep girls in school and ensure that they have access to technical and scientific fields. To combat unemployment, we have also set up public-private partnership programmes for young people and women that have disbursed $140 million so far, and we expect that amount to rise significantly.
We have managed to launch many projects in the area of infrastructure that have changed the face of Guinea, and with the participation of our public and private partners, we have established a programme for launching significant construction projects in social housing and road, rail and port infrastructure, including the establishment of special economic zones, which will enable Guinea to finally become an exporter of finished products.
Under my presidency of the African Union, the African Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) was launched at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. That transformative initiative, launched and led by Africa, is designed to accelerate, intensify and exploit the continent’s immense potential in renewable energy resources, sustainable development and respect for the climate, which are the watchwords of that initiative. Despite the great scepticism that accompanied the creation of AREI in a general context in which we have become accustomed to never fulfilling the goals we set, today I have the pleasure and honour to announce to the Assembly that on 23 September the AREI Board of Directors confirmed that our target of funding 10 gigawatts of electricity, set for 2020, has been achieved, as we are already at 9.99 gigawatts.
I am also pleased to inform the Assembly that 92 other projects are at the technical evaluation stage and in the course of being approved. That will enable us to provide clean energy to millions of households across every geographic regions of the world. We can therefore say that with that renewable energy initiative, Africa is acting in the fight against climate change for both our continent and the world, better positioning Africa for participating in the world’s open trade networks. Two- thirds of Africans do not have access to electricity. I am making an appeal here to encourage and solicit the involvement of more public and private partners from around the world to invest in the renewable energy sector in Africa. That will enable our continent to use its resources more efficiently and make life more enjoyable and attractive to our young people so that they can finally see emigration as a choice and not an unavoidable constraint. When Africa wins, the world wins, because Africa is the future of the world.


We are getting ever closer to the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations, which was established thanks to victory in the Second World War and our recognition that a collective mechanism for maintaining international peace and security was essential. Unhappily, the events of the Cold War, which began soon after, prevented it from unleashing the full extent of its potential for good. The hope re-emerged almost 30 years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of two irreconcilably opposed systems. It was the hope that perhaps at last we could turn the page on the pain of wars, cold and hot, and unite our efforts for the benefit of all humankind.
However, we have to admit that despite the fact that thanks to the United Nations we have succeeded in preventing a third world war, there are no fewer conflicts and enmity on the Earth, and new and terrible challenges have emerged — international terrorism, drug trafficking, climate change, illegal migration and a growing gap between rich and poor. Coping with these and many other challenges becomes harder and harder every year, and the international community is only growing ever more fragmented. We believe that the chief reason for this state of affairs is the unwillingness of the countries that declared themselves the victors in the Cold War to consider the legitimate interests of every other State and to accept the objective realities of the course of history. The West is finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact that its centuries-long dominance of world affairs is disappearing. New centres of economic growth and political influence are springing up and becoming stronger, and without them it will be impossible to find sustainable solutions to the world’s problems, which we can address only through the firm foundation provided by the Charter of the United Nations and by balancing the interests of every State.
The leading Western nations are trying to prevent the establishment of a polycentric world, restore their positions of privilege and impose standards of conduct on everyone else based on their own narrow interpretation of liberalism. To put it in a nutshell, they say, “We are liberals and can therefore do anything we want”. In its desire to achieve this, the West recalls international law ever more rarely, and ever more often and more insistently argues for a so-called rules-based order. The aim of the concept of this kind of order is obvious — it is to rewrite the norms of international law that no longer suit the West and replace them with rules that conform to their self-serving schemes, devised based on political expediency, while the West proclaims itself, and itself alone, the undisputed source of legitimacy. For instance, when it is advantageous, the right of peoples to self-determination is important, but when it is not, it is declared to be illegitimate.
These revisionist rules are justified by manipulating the public consciousness, disseminating false information, creating double standards for human rights, suppressing unwelcome media outlets and banning journalism. The West also has apt pupils among its client States in post-Soviet territory. Collective work on an equal footing is being replaced by closed- format meetings held outside the legitimate multilateral frameworks, with approaches agreed on behind closed doors by a select few that are then declared to be multilateral agreements, accompanied by attempts to privatize the secretariats of international organizations and use them to advance non-consensus ideas in order to circumvent universal mechanisms.
The attacks on international law are reaching alarming levels. There has been much talk about the withdrawal of the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran’s nuclear programme, endorsed by Security Council resolution 2231 (2015). Not only has Washington repudiated its obligations under the resolution, it has started demanding that everyone else also play by the United States’ rules and sabotage its implementation. The United States has taken a hard line in its efforts to erode United Nations resolutions on the international legal foundations for a settlement in the Middle East. It has proposed that we await some so-called deal of the century while at the same time it takes unilateral decisions on Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The possibility of a two-State solution to the Palestinian issue, which is of key significance for satisfying the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people and ensuring the security of Israel and the whole region, is under threat.
When members of NATO bombed Libya in open violation of Security Council resolutions, it was clear that they too were guided by the logic of their so-called rules-based order. The result was the destruction of Libya’s statehood, while to this day the international community is grappling with the mess created by the pernicious legacy of NATO’s adventurism, especially for the countries of Africa.
The hidden agendas continue in the counter-terrorism arena. Despite the universally binding Security Council resolutions on listing terrorist organizations, some countries have made it a rule to shield terrorists and even work with them on the ground, as we have seen in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, for instance. The United States is already saying openly that Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham is a quite moderate group that it can do business with. It also wants to get other members of the Security Council to go along with its unacceptable reasoning, as the recent discussions on the situation in Idlib in Syria showed. And the West also applies its own rules with regard to the Balkans, where it is openly working to undermine Security Council resolutions on the settlements in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Together with the resolutions of the Security Council, our universal conventions are integral to international law. The West would like to replace them with its rules, too, as happened with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, whose Technical — and I stress the word “technical” — Secretariat was illegally granted so-called attributive functions as a result of unlawful manipulation and unscrupulous pressure, in direct violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the exclusive prerogatives of the Security Council.
The game-playing continues around conventions that require all countries to uphold the linguistic, educational, religious and other rights of their national minorities. Even here our Western colleagues are guided by their rules. They turn a blind eye to blatant efforts to deny national minorities such rights and continue to condone the shameful existence of statelessness in Europe.
Revisionist tendencies with regard to international law are increasingly evident in the sustained attempts to rewrite the history of the Second World War and to justify the growing manifestations of neo-Nazism and the vandalism of monuments to the liberators of Europe and the victims of the Holocaust. The strength of key principles of the United Nations Charter such as non-interference in the internal affairs of others and the inadmissibility of the use or threat of force is also being tested. Attempts are now being made to add Venezuela to the list of countries whose statehood has been violated before our eyes through aggression or foreign-inspired coups. Like an overwhelming majority of the States Members of the United Nations, Russia rejects any attempt to resurrect the rules of the Monroe Doctrine era in Latin America and to effect regime change in sovereign States from outside without shrinking from military blackmail, unlawful coercion and blockades, as is the case with Cuba despite numerous United Nations resolutions.
Next year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which was adopted on Russia’s initiative. To this day, however, a number of western States are still clinging to the old rules, ignoring the Declaration and other General Assembly resolutions on decolonization that pertain directly to them by retaining their control over former overseas territories.
This November marks another anniversary —20 years since the Charter for European Security and the Platform for Cooperative Security were adopted at the sixth Summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Those documents set out the principles of cooperation for every country and regional organization in the Euro-Atlantic area. Our Heads of States and Governments solemnly declared that no country should pursue its own security at the expense of another. Today, regrettably, the consensus reached back then at the highest level is being replaced by the practices that NATO has adopted as its rules, as it continues to think in terms of seeking out enemies, moving its military infrastructure eastward towards Russia’s borders and increasing its military budgets, although they are already more than 20 times larger than those of Russia. We call for a return to the agreements that establish equal and indivisible security within the OSCE area, which some of Europe’s responsible politicians have spoken out in favour of recently, as was the case at the August meeting of President Putin of Russia and President Macron of France, for instance.
We also need a reliable and open architecture in the Asia-Pacific region. It would be dangerous to yield to the temptation to divide it into conflicting blocs, which would be at odds with the goal of uniting the efforts of every country of the region to respond effectively to the continuing threats and challenges there, including that of resolving the whole complex of issues on the Korean peninsula by exclusively peaceful means.
Tremendous damage has been done to the decades- old system of global strategic stability by the actions of the United States, which, after withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, has now destroyed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, with the obedient support of every member of NATO. Now the future of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is in question. On top of that, the United States refuses to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear- Test-Ban Treaty and has lowered the threshold in its doctrinal documents for the use of nuclear weapons. It is also on a course to transform cyberspace and outer space into arenas for military confrontation.
Russia has put forward a number of initiatives to prevent the further escalation of tensions. President Putin announced the decision to refrain from deploying land- based intermediate- and short-range missiles in Europe and other regions as long as the United States does the same. We have urged the United States and NATO to sign up to a moratorium in that regard. We have also repeatedly invited Washington to begin negotiations on extending the New START Treaty. Together with China, we support an agreement on a legally binding document on the prevention of an arms race in outer space. So far the reaction of the United States and its allies to all of these proposals has not been encouraging. We are also disturbed by the protracted lack of a response to a proposal we made to our American colleagues a year ago to adopt a high-level Russian-American declaration on the unacceptability and inadmissibility of nuclear war, a war that by definition no one can win. We call on all Member States to support that initiative.
Today I would like to announce that during the current session of the General Assembly we will introduce a draft resolution on strengthening and developing the system of agreements on arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation. We invite everyone to constructive negotiations. The adoption of such a resolution would represent a major contribution to creating the conditions for a successful Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons next year.
Russia will continue to work diligently to strengthen global security. We are acting with the utmost responsibility in this area by exercising restraint in building our defence capacity, although obviously not at the expense of effectively guaranteeing national security, and in full compliance with international law. We support the consolidation of efforts to combat international terrorism under the auspices of the United Nations. In the interests of mobilizing the potential of regional organizations to suppress the threat of terrorism, Russia convened a ministerial meeting of the Security Council (see S/PV.8626), with the participation of representatives of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
One of the most crucial tasks of the international community is developing generally acceptable approaches to regulating the digital arena and understanding the processes related to the development of artificial intelligence. Last year, the General Assembly endorsed the start of substantive work to agree on rules for responsible State behaviour in the information space. On Russia’s initiative it also adopted resolution 73/187, on combating cybercrime. It will be important to work to reach legally binding agreements on every aspect of international information security.
We should also ramp up our efforts to settle the many crises and conflicts all over the world. The main point is to get the parties involved to comply with existing agreements and not to allow them to invent pretexts for refusing to fulfil commitments they have already made. Of course, that also applies to conflicts in the post-Soviet space, including the importance of strict compliance with the provisions of the Minsk package of measures for resolving the crisis in eastern Ukraine.
In Syria, where there have been major successes in the fight against terrorism, the priority now is further advancing the political process, led by the Syrians with the assistance of the United Nations. With the decisive contribution of Russia, Turkey and Iran as guarantors of the Astana format, the Constitutional Committee has been established, as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced a few days ago. On the agenda are post-conflict reconstruction and the creation of conditions conducive to the return of refugees. The United Nations system should play a much more active role in this.
In general, however, there are still many problems in the Middle East and North Africa. We have seen what is happening in Libya and Yemen. The prospects for a resolution of the Palestinian peace process and the realization of the Arab Peace Initiative are on the verge of collapse. The attempts to play the Kurdish card, which is potentially a combustible issue for many countries, are alarming. The tensions in the Persian Gulf are being artificially escalated. We call for resolving the existing disagreements through dialogue, without resorting to baseless accusations. This summer we contributed by presenting Russia’s renewed concept for collective security in the region.
Yesterday, in support of the efforts of African States to end the conflicts on their continent, Russia held a Security Council meeting on strengthening peace and security in Africa (see S/PV.8627). In Sochi, at the end of October, we will host the first-ever Russia-Africa Summit, and we hope that its results will enable us to improve the effectiveness of the fight against the current challenges and threats, as well as of the work on the development issues that African countries face.
The reform of the Security Council is aimed at improving the anti-crisis and peacekeeping activities of the United Nations. The realities of our multipolar world mean that our chief task is finding a formula that can end the obvious geopolitical imbalances in the Council’s current composition and expand the representation of African, Asian, and Latin American countries on it, with the broadest possible agreement of Member States.
Dividing lines are damaging to the world economy as well as world politics. The economy’s inclusive growth is being limited as a result of the fact that other rules are replacing the norms of the World Trade Organization — methods involving unfair competition, protectionism, trade wars, unilateral sanctions and blatant abuse of the status of the American dollar. That all leads to the fragmentation of the global economic arena and has a negative impact on people’s lives. We believe that it is essential to return to working constructively together both in entities of the United Nations system and in the Group of 20. We will help to create conditions conducive to that, including through the potential of the BRICS group of countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, of which Russia will assume the pro tempore presidency in 2020.
Together with other like-minded countries, we support harmonizing integration processes. That approach is at the core of President Putin’s initiative in establishing a greater Eurasian partnership made up of the member countries of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and which is open to all States in Eurasia, including the European Union member countries. We have already made progress in that direction by linking development plans for the Eurasian Economic Union and the Chinese Belt and Road initiative. The consistent implementation of those efforts will enable us not only to speed up economic growth but also to lay a solid foundation for building a space of peace, stability and cooperation from Lisbon to Jakarta.
In the run-up to the next anniversary of the United Nations, I would like to underline that despite all its trials, the system of a world order centred on the United Nations remains stable and has considerable capacity for resilience. It is a kind of safety net, and if we respect the Charter, it will guarantee humankind’s peaceful development by finding a balance of what are sometimes the very contradictory interests of various countries. Perhaps the main conclusion to be drawn from those 75 years is that States’ experience of non-ideological cooperation in the face of a common threat, gained in the course of that cruellest of wars, is still relevant. Today’s challenges and threats are no less dangerous. Only by working together can we respond to them effectively. Half a century ago, the great Russian scholar, public figure and Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov wrote, “The division of mankind threatens it with destruction ... If mankind is to step away from the brink, it must overcome its divisions”.
The founding fathers of the United Nations saw its chief task as one of uniting. Let us show ourselves worthy of their legacy and their memory.