France

Mr. President of the General Assembly, Ladies and Gentlemen Heads of State and Government, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen Ambassadors,

I speak here on behalf of a country that will never forget what nations are capable of when they are united: freedom. This year France paid tribute to the peoples of America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania who enabled it to free itself from the Nazi grip eight decades ago. Progress and peace.

Once liberated, France founded with these peoples a community of free and sovereign States, capable of making commitments to one another and agreeing on what is essential.

Hope, like that which we saw once again in recent times during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, hosted this summer by France in beauty, enthusiasm and the concord of peoples.

And yet, despite this jubilation, the Olympic Truce, unanimously called for right here in this very hall, remained a dead letter. And yet, the danger of words without effect and of powerless diplomacy is before us every day. And yet, our Organization is facing the greatest convergence of crises it has probably known in these eight decades of existence. The feeling of a loss of control is growing in the face of wars, climate change, and the increase of inequalities and injustices. And every day humanity seems to fragment further, even as circumstances demand that we find common, strong, effective responses.

To restore to these two words, United Nations, their power to inspire hope, we must come together again, as in the past, on an essential foundation. And it is of this that I would like to say a few words.

First and foremost, we must restore the terms of trust and respect between peoples, and I see them fading in the debates before us. To do so, we must indeed show equal attention to those who suffer.

I spoke of this here two years ago, warning against the possibility of a double standard, one life equals one life. The protection of civilians is a peremptory norm and must remain our compass, even as we celebrate this year the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions. Let us not allow, for even a single moment, the idea to take hold that the dead of Ukraine are those of the North, that the dead of Gaza are those of the South, and that the dead of the conflicts in Sudan, in the Great Lakes region, or in Myanmar would be those whose fate only isolated consciences would be outraged by.

Regaining control and restoring this trust therefore means seeking peace everywhere, accepting no difference whenever the dignity of human life is at stake, accepting no difference whenever the territorial integrity and sovereignty of States is at stake. These conflicts today call into question our very capacity to ensure respect for our Charter of the United Nations. And when I see some wanting to propose peace by demanding capitulation, I am astonished that such an idea could even be supported.

I want to restate here how indispensable the protection of civilians, of all humanitarian workers, of all those who work for our common values, is in each of these conflicts.

Next, we must provide a common response to the great challenges posed by the two wars affecting Europe and the Middle East. Russia, indeed, is waging a war of territorial conquest in Ukraine in defiance of the most fundamental principles of international life. It is guilty of grave violations of law, of ethics, even of honor. Nothing it does corresponds to the common interest of nations, nor to the particular responsibilities it bears within this Organization. Ukraine's fate is bound up with peace and security in Europe and in the world. For who could still believe themselves protected from their strongest, most violent, most greedy neighbors, if we were to let Russia prevail as though nothing had happened? No one.

It is therefore in our common interest, the common interest of nations, that Ukraine be restored as quickly as possible to its legitimate rights and that a just and lasting peace be built. France will continue to do everything in its power to ensure that Ukraine holds firm, is placed out of danger, and obtains justice. It will continue to provide it with the equipment indispensable to its defense, and together with its closest allies and partners, France will support the remarkable resistance of the Ukrainian people and commit itself to ensuring that it obtains lasting security. Let us seek peace. France will know how to join forces with all sincere partners to build a solid peace for Ukraine and for Europe.

I know that for many of you, the essential matter lies elsewhere—in the all-too-long list of forgotten wars, unjust victories, poorly negotiated resolutions or ones sometimes never implemented. I forget none of them, even if I cannot mention them all here. President Tshisekedi spoke from this podium just before me, and the situation in the Great Lakes region—which I will return to with him, and with President Kagame in a few days—concerns us. And in Armenia, Mr. Prime Minister, alongside which France stands firm in the face of pressure from Azerbaijan and over the territories, the international community must be present so that peace negotiations succeed and internationally recognized borders are preserved.

But I know that for many of you, the essential matter, beyond these wars, is also today—and it is for us as well—Gaza, where the fate of the Palestinian people is present, and weighs on each of our debates.

On this most complex subject as well, I would like to restate with the greatest clarity France's position since day one. We firmly condemn the terrible and unprecedented terrorist attack decided upon and carried out by Hamas against Israel on October 7. Terrorism is unacceptable, whatever its causes, and we mourn here the victims of the Hamas attack of last October 7, among them 48 French citizens. I extend my thoughts of compassion and friendship to all the families living with the pain of having lost children, parents, friends on October 7. We also once again solemnly demand that the hostages be released. Among them, several of our French compatriots remain. And I want to commend here the efforts of the United States of America, Egypt and Qatar to achieve this. This remains a priority for all of us.

Israel, in the face of this terrorist attack, has the legitimate right to protect its people and to strip Hamas of the means to attack again. And none of us would have suffered the blows received on October 7 without drawing consequences from them. And yet, the war Israel is waging in Gaza has gone on far too long. The tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian victims have no justification, no explanation. Too many innocents have died, and we mourn them too. And these deaths are, likewise, a scandal for humanity and a dangerous source of hatred and resentment that threatens and will threaten the security of all, including that of Israel tomorrow.

This war must therefore end, and a ceasefire must come as quickly as possible, along with the release of the hostages and the massive arrival of humanitarian aid in Gaza. We have held this position since October 2023, pushing resolutions with many of you, holding the first humanitarian conference for Gaza as early as November in Paris. Today it is a matter of political will, given the destruction of Hamas's military capabilities. It is imperative that a new phase open in Gaza, that the guns fall silent, that humanitarian workers return, that civilian populations finally be protected. France will participate in any initiative that saves lives and that ensures the security of all. The deployment of an international mission must open the way to implementation of the two-State solution. It is up to the United Nations Security Council to make a determination in this regard, and the necessary measures must also be taken without further delay to preserve the link between Gaza and the West Bank, to restore the Palestinian Authority to its functions, and to ensure the reconstruction of the territory and once again make life simply possible.

France will commit itself to ensuring that everything is done so that the Palestinians finally have a State living side by side with Israel. The conditions for a just and lasting peace are known. What remains is to open the path to it. It must be as short as possible. France will therefore draw the consequences of its commitment to the two-State solution and renew its action so that it may finally come about for the benefit of the peoples, to answer their legitimate aspirations, to bring about a Palestinian State, to give Israel all the guarantees necessary for its security, to build mutual recognition and common security guarantees for all in the region. We will work on this in the coming weeks with Israelis and Palestinians, as with all our regional and international partners.

For the moment, as we speak, the main risk is that of escalation. My thoughts of solidarity go out to Lebanon and the Lebanese people. Hezbollah has for too long been taking the unsustainable risk of dragging Lebanon into war. Israel, for its part, cannot extend its operations into Lebanon without consequences. France demands that each side respect its obligations along the Blue Line. We will therefore act to bring about the diplomatic path that is indispensable in order to spare civilian populations and prevent a regional explosion. There must not be, there cannot be, a war in Lebanon.

That is why we call forcefully on Israel to cease the escalation in Lebanon and on Hezbollah to cease firing on Israel. We call forcefully on all those who provide them the means to do so to stop doing so. We have asked that the Security Council be able to meet today for this purpose, and I welcome that. And the French minister will travel to Lebanon at the end of this week.

It is this same unity that we must show in the face of the great regional and global challenges before us. For beyond the conflicts we know and that I have just mentioned, we must together continue to ensure respect for everyone's sovereignty, to build regional and international solutions to these challenges. This is the whole meaning of the relationship we want with Africa, a new partnership, and this is what we have been working to build for the past two years. France has done a great deal in recent years for the African continent, it has done a great deal over recent decades, but quite particularly in the Sahel, where French forces successfully fought terrorism, side by side with their regional and international partners.

However, the military coups in the region have led us to draw the legitimate conclusions. But Europe and Africa share a common destiny before them, which demands a broad partnership. A partnership for peace and security that requires renewing its terms: more training, more equipment, more mutual respect. A partnership also based on economy, energy, sport, culture, memory.

This is what, with Benin, Senegal, Cameroon, Algeria, Morocco and many other countries, we have patiently built in recent years and will continue to implement. It is the same philosophy that, for six years now, has led us to build an unprecedented partnership with the Indo-Pacific, where France's ambition is to contribute to respect for international law, without which there can be no prosperity.

In this region, which has experienced exceptional growth in recent decades, some are tempted to free themselves from the rules, even to impose their will by force. France offers an alternative, not to replace anyone, but to give the States of the region back the possibility of choosing their partner, project by project.

The French territories in the Indo-Pacific have unique expertise in the fight against climate change, the protection of biodiversity, the development of clean energy, or the fight against transnational threats. Our vocation in this regard in the region is to cooperate more with everyone, within their environment. As you understand, this partnership-based logic is one that aims to build new balances, to refuse the fragmentation of the world or old grammars, but rather to seek, in mutual respect, to build paths of stability and peace.

Beyond this, the challenge before us, buffeted by the conflicts I mentioned a moment ago, would be to lose the thread of our multilateral agenda, to lose the effectiveness to which we are committed. And after having lived through the pandemic, which reminded us so forcefully of the importance of certain of these common challenges, to forget that we must keep pursuing this thread. I believe profoundly that effective multilateralism has never been as necessary as it is today, and must lead to results in the areas of development and the fight against inequalities in education, health, climate and biodiversity, and technology. On each of these pillars, we need unity. And we also need, here too, to do everything possible to avoid a rupture between North and South. This is exactly the philosophy we developed in the Paris Pact for People and the Planet, which more than 60 States have now joined.

First, ensure that we never push a State to choose between its objectives. Why should States of the North lecture States of the South, telling them they should respect the climate and therefore forgo economic opportunities? They should do what some of them, in the North, did not do 20, 30 or 40 years ago. This is unacceptable and will not be heard. We must therefore build an agenda that allows progress at the same time in the fight against inequalities and in economic development, for education, climate and biodiversity, and global health.

Next, solutions must be made and based on proposals from the States themselves. This is what we have, for example, begun to build with our partnerships for just energy transitions. Not having a single solution for everyone, or lessons handed down from our capitals where, in a way, people come to inspect countries and ask them all to follow the same recipe. There is a singular path for each country. That is the key to sovereignty.

And then, we need a shock of public finance and additional private leverage. This is what enabled us, three years ago, to work toward increasing the IMF's Special Drawing Rights and to obtain the effective reallocation of nearly 100 billion in Special Drawing Rights for the benefit of the countries that need them most, particularly in Africa. A silent but indispensable revolution.

This is also why, strengthened by this pact—and we were with several of its members just a moment ago—under the effective leadership of President Macky Sall and with the assistance of the United Nations, the OECD and the organizations concerned, we want to continue this cycle of reforms and carry out a deep reform of the multilateral banks and our financial institutions.

We have launched this "Finance in Common" objective, bringing together development banks from around the world, including those whose agendas are not aligned with ours. We must work on this Finance in Common agenda in order to be able to meet the objectives I mentioned. And we must, together, I hope in the coming months, deeply reform the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, first in order to renew their membership, since these institutions were designed at a time when so many of you here were not yet independent.

We must renew the capital structure to give it more strength. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were designed, conceived, calibrated at a time when the challenges were not the same, when the world economy did not have this scale, when demographics had nothing in common with today's. We must lift the absurd taboos. Blockages sometimes imposed by the largest powers that prevent others from putting in more money for fear of being diluted. We must give these institutions the capacity to act, in order to finance the projects that the countries of the South need. And this reform is imperative for our collective credibility.

I say this to the richest States and to those who, alongside France, sit around the table. Decide not to do it, and you will see, in the years to come, an alternative order emerge. It will come from others who do not share your agenda. Decide not to do it, and you will be vilified, accused of cynicism, and perhaps not wrongly so.

This reform of financial multilateralism is indispensable to meeting these challenges. We must also continue our agenda on climate and biodiversity. The upcoming COPs are important milestones, and France will play its full part, in particular by organizing, together with Costa Rica, on behalf of the United Nations, an important meeting on the oceans.

Nice, indeed, will host the United Nations Ocean Conference in June 2025, and in doing so we will continue our work. And I hope that many of you will be able to ratify, in this regard, the achievements of recent months, in particular the Treaty on the protection of the high seas, which is indispensable. And we are also continuing to make progress on the so essential question of water, with the new One Planet Summit on water, alongside Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia. I will not list every necessary and indispensable topic here.

But I also want to recall how much Artificial Intelligence requires that, within our chamber, all the States present coordinate with one another. We need to foster innovation. We need to ensure that the innovation of Artificial Intelligence will be accessible to all the countries and peoples of the planet, and that it does not feed new divides and new inequalities. But we need all of this to develop within an ethical, democratic framework, conceived by the peoples of the planet.

We cannot allow a few, let alone private actors who are today at the forefront of these innovations, to think through the future of these technologies on our behalf and on behalf of our peoples. That is why France will host the next AI Action Summit in February 2025.

But as you understand, the objective is to build this common framework, and I welcome the work carried out and coordinated by the Secretary-General and the Global Digital Compact, built with the best experts, which fully embodies the philosophy we subscribe to.

To conclude my remarks, Ladies and Gentlemen, and aware that I have left out so many difficult situations—from Venezuela to the heart of Africa, through so many tensions in Oceania—I would like to conclude by speaking about our Institutions.

I hear many voices rising to say that, deep down, the United Nations should be thrown away; that it no longer serves any purpose; you can see for yourselves, we cannot manage to resolve conflicts.

Let us have, in this matter, a constructive impatience. Let us be impatient—I share that with you—we cannot be satisfied with not knowing how to fix things. But let us be clear, the responsible parties are right here. As long as we have a Security Council that is blocked, I would say, reciprocally, according to the interests of one side or the other, we will struggle to make progress.

Is there a better system? I do not believe so. So let us simply make this United Nations more effective, first perhaps by making it more representative. That is why France, and I say it again here, is in favor of an enlarged Security Council.

Germany, Japan, India, Brazil should become permanent members, as should two countries that Africa would designate to represent it. New elected members should also be admitted to it.

But reform of the composition of the Security Council alone would not be enough to restore its effectiveness. And I therefore wish for this reform to also allow for a change in working methods, to limit the veto right in cases of mass atrocity crimes, and to focus on the operational decisions required for the maintenance of international peace and security. This is what we must have the courage and boldness to do, and which, together with the current permanent members, we must carry forward.

Nearly 25 years after the Millennium Summit, the time has come to regain effectiveness, in order to act better on the ground alongside States as well as civil society. And beyond the United Nations, we must open a new era in each of our multilateral institutions, as I have just mentioned.

These, Ladies and Gentlemen, are the few words I wanted to share with you here today. In this grave moment for our international order, where so many conflicts seem unable to be resolved, I want to say that France will continue to try to uphold this demanding path, faithful to its values, which refuses the simplifications of the moment and which will continue to fight for the simple principles that have always guided us: human dignity, respect for the principles of the Charter—and which, beyond conflicts and current events, is intended to continue building with you a more just and more effective international order. Such will be our voice, always distinct, alongside our friends and our allies. But also free, at times, to say no, sometimes to refuse the cynicism of the moment or the so-called self-evident truths that are nothing of the kind.

Thank you for your attention.