Congo

Mr. President of the General Assembly!

Mr. Secretary-General of the United Nations!

Ladies and gentlemen Heads of State and Government!

Ladies and gentlemen Ministers!

Ladies and gentlemen Ambassadors, dear Friends!

Before anything else, I would like to express my great admiration for Mr. Philémon Yang, a personality of great renown on the African continent, brilliantly elected to the presidency of our Assembly, whom we have seen conduct our debates with great dexterity.

Mr. President!

Our world - most speakers have said so from this podium - is indeed at a crossroads. It is confronted with a kind of baleful spiral of interlocking crises and dangerous conflicts that one might almost believe irreconcilable.

Indeed, the situations of war or armed violence, of every kind, in Ukraine, in Palestine, in Lebanon, in Sudan, in the Sahel, in the Horn of Africa, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo - situations whose list is unfortunately not exhaustive and to which must be added the climate crisis, the unsustainable burden of debt and the apocalyptic specter of nuclear war… are all existential challenges that today call upon what remains of human wisdom and that raise questions about what remains of our conscience of good and evil!

All these situations, Mr. President - each of us in this room knows it - are largely revealing as much as they are dependent on human vanity. They are the faithful reflection of the irrepressible propensity of some among us to dominate absolutely, to possess absolutely.

A pernicious vice, whose roots certainly lie in the genesis of Humanity, but which we have still not managed to eradicate.

From this podium, in the name of peace, I call for a return to reason on the part of all those who exercise political power around the world.

In the name of peace, I appeal to their wisdom. That cardinal virtue which the Ancients already dispensed, in all our societies: in Africa, in Asia, in Europe, in the Americas and in the Pacific.

In the name of peace, I appeal to the full awareness that we are but one human race, embarked on the same vessel, bound by a shared destiny, held by reciprocal obligations and shared duties.

I appeal to universal brotherhood, that generous utopia, sublimated in the time of the Enlightenment, which nourished, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has become the Creed of all Humanists.

Mr. President!

Our world vitally needs to reconnect with peace. Otherwise, it is heading straight toward its ruin. Peace is not an option. It cannot be an alternative. Peace is an imperative. And this imperative must be imposed on all, everywhere and in every place!

It is precisely this imperative of peace, Mr. President, that today drives the mediation efforts of the African Union in Libya, a country where President Denis Sassou N'Guesso has invested himself tirelessly for years toward a general appeasement and an inclusive reconciliation.

Through perseverance and tenacity, the African Union High-Level Committee on Libya, which he chairs, has managed to bring yesterday's "enemy brothers" to sit around the same table.

This Committee has encouraged them to talk to one another. It has urged them to forgive one another. And it has persuaded them to give precedence to justice, the foundation of the rule of law to which this Libya, rising from its ashes like the invincible Phoenix, aspires.

This appeasement, obstinately sought and patiently cultivated over the years, should soon be materialized by the solemn signing, by all parties, in Addis Ababa, of a "Charter of Reconciliation." Thus, the path leading to the long-awaited general, free and democratic elections would be largely cleared.

Mr. President!

The renewal of multilateralism, underlying the "Pact for the Future" that we have just adopted, obviously requires the affirmation of a multipolar world, a paragon of the diversity of cultural expressions. It requires a just, stable and equitable world, where all the peoples of the world live together, without any distinction, whether of "race," tradition, or religion.

Hence the imperative necessity of reforming the international institutions born of the Second World War, starting with the United Nations Security Council, which must embrace the face of our cosmopolitan world through a fairer representation of peoples.

This is the place to recall Africa's legitimate advocacy for two permanent seats, with veto rights, on this Council. In this regard, my country reaffirms the centrality and permanence of the African Common Position, as set out in the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration.

The moment has come, Mr. President, for Africa to take its full place in the concert of nations. It is up to us, representatives of the allied Nations present here, to make the choice of honor!

It is up to us to enter History through the front door… by moving away forever from medieval prejudices and obscure stereotypes about Africa!

It is up to us to consolidate and amplify our generous convergences, those very ones that trace the true paths of the History of humankind!

Mr. President!

There will be no sustainable development on any continent if our planet is not protected from the factors that destroy the environment. Climate change is today an existential threat!

This threat, we know, is multidimensional: rising temperatures, melting glaciers, catastrophic flooding, encroaching desertification, the demolition of biodiversity, the eruption of epidemics and the exodus of populations that all this entails, are the perfect illustration of the fragility that now characterizes our beautiful blue planet.

The community of nations has hardly any choice but to act. Act here and now! Act without hesitation, with rigor and responsibility, in order to spare our world an irreparable cataclysmic upheaval.

One of the pillars of this action is, quite obviously, intelligent afforestation and generalized reforestation of the planet. Since each must contribute their share, the Republic of the Congo and the African Union have come to this 79th General Assembly with a well-developed strategy, which my delegation has already placed on the agenda of upcoming committee work as a Draft Resolution.

This strategy, for which I request in advance the support of our Assembly, aims at the substantial, progressive and irreversible increase of the world's forest area, on the basis of international cooperation that harmoniously pools afforestation and reforestation activities across the entire globe. All of this, in a spirit of solidarity, coordination, consultation and consensus among States.

Mr. President!

I cannot leave this podium without returning to a situation that continually calls upon our conscience. A situation before which, morally, we cannot give up. It is the ever-lasting blockade imposed on Cuba.

A blockade whose duration is gradually approaching… a century! A blockade that causes untold suffering to the innocent populations of that country. It has been a long time, Mr. President, since this blockade, which many Americans themselves find "anachronistic" - it has been a long time since this blockade should have been purely and simply abolished.

Once again, I would like to appeal to the wisdom of the American people and to the sagacity of their leaders, who, for the most part, we know, have nothing to do with this kind of residual avatar of the Cold War.

I urge the Government of the United States to turn forever this painful page in the history of two peoples, both born of the mixed blending and blessed cultural osmosis between Europe, Africa and pre-Columbian America.

In closing, Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, I express the wish to see all the peoples of the world resolutely engage in the struggle for the emergence of a new Humanity:

• a peaceful Humanity, which turns its back forever on war and death and which pools its solidarities;

• an authentic Humanity, which fights mercilessly against that endemic poverty which wreaks such havoc in developing countries, which is a veritable cancer in our global society and which is one of the main causes of those frustrations and that violence which so darken the horizon of hope;

• finally, a fraternal and "rainbow" Humanity, as the great artist John Lennon imagined it in this very city, and as Nelson Mandela dreamed it from deep within his prison.

Thank you.