France

Madam President of the General Assembly, Mr. Secretary-General, Madam Deputy Secretary-General, Mr. Deputy Secretary-General, Ladies and gentlemen Heads of State and Government, Ladies and gentlemen Ministers, Ladies and gentlemen Ambassadors and Delegates,

I am pleased to speak before you once again, at the opening of this eightieth session of the United Nations General Assembly. Eight decades that we wanted to devote to the service of peace, development, and human rights. Eighty years that oblige us to measure the distance traveled and to adapt our pace to that of the world.

On 26 June 1945, we adopted the Charter of the United Nations after two world wars, while fighting was still raging in Asia, decolonization had barely begun, the Soviet Union was expanding its empire, we were counting the dead by the millions, and discovering the horror of the Shoah. Yes, that chapter of the world's history was not yet over, and yet we were building, through resolution and determination, the will to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war; we proclaimed our faith in fundamental human rights and pledged to establish conditions for justice, to promote social progress, to practice tolerance, and to live together in peace with one another. We were not dreaming. And in recalling here our past, what we were 80 years ago, I want to tell you tonight: "we have the right to dream," because our world today deserves the same determination to act together.

We were 51 in San Francisco, and now 193 member states sit in this Assembly. The texts that founded our Organization clearly set out the principles of collective action. They express shared values; they define robust procedures. Yet I know how deep the frustrations run, fed by the unequal representation of states on the Security Council, which is why I strongly support its enlargement, its reform, in particular its enlargement for the African continent. I also know that political, economic, and social balances have shifted, that new actors have taken on greater responsibilities, and that a multitude of people are questioning the promise of the United Nations, its reality, and its benefit.

Let us not lie to ourselves. This eightieth anniversary is not a celebration. Armed conflicts are multiplying, internal or international, state-driven or fueled by criminal and terrorist action. Belligerents deliberately flout the Geneva Conventions, as if horror served vengeance or terror served victory. Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The list of violence suffered by populations in these war-torn territories is as long as it is unbearable. Great transformations are also under way for all of us on this planet. Climate change is not under control, and the collapse of biodiversity continues. The efforts most of us are ready to make run up against the cynicism of a few who could make a difference but still refuse to. We see the acceleration of technology opening up immense horizons, immense opportunities, but also leaving the field open to forces all the more dangerous for being unregulated. We see world trade living through an era of tariff wars, adding to the great global imbalances.

This alarm does not extinguish hope. Our divisions do not prevent Syria from having freed itself from dictatorship, Ukraine from holding firm, and peace from being possible in the Great Lakes region. We have also approved ambitious treaties and agreements that some thought impossible: a treaty on pandemics, a treaty to protect the high seas, another to finance development. It is a good thing that the complexity of the world is not a reason to give up on our principles and our ambitions. In a sense, we are living through a paradoxical moment, in which we need, more than ever, to restore the spirit of cooperation that prevailed 80 years ago, and yet we are dividing ourselves — and it must be said, the divisions at the top of the world order, the fracturing of the world, are holding back our collective capacity to resolve the great conflicts of the moment or to meet the challenges that require us to come to an understanding.

France is proud to count itself among the peoples of the United Nations and pays tribute to all those who serve it: soldiers under the blue helmet who maintain peace where no one else goes anymore, humanitarian workers and health personnel who come to the aid of the most vulnerable, jurists, observers, and rapporteurs who bear witness to reality, uphold the force of law, and prevent arbitrariness. I would like to speak here of so very many of our NGOs, our caregivers, our journalists. Many others too who testify that this organization is irreplaceable. That is precisely why those who criticize it most harshly are also those who want to change the rules of the game, sure of their dominance and more interested in carving up the world than in reaching the compromises necessary for the common good. At bottom, the great risk of the moment we are living through is the risk of seeing the fait accompli prevail. It is the risk of seeing the law of the strongest prevail. It is the risk of seeing the selfishness of a few prevail. It is the risk of seeing a few believe that they alone can decide the course of the world, and forget that there is no international community without a respectful relationship among peers, without cooperation among peers — which alone makes peace possible, which alone makes it possible to meet the challenges of climate change, technological transformation, or the fight against military proliferation.

That is why our priority, 80 years on, must be to know how to find again the vital sap of effective multilateralism — a collective effectiveness that, it must be said, the obstruction practiced by a few makes almost impossible for our collective organization. We must work together to recover this effective multilateralism. And in this regard, it is futile to divide North from South, to think that there would be a united West facing a Global South. That is a fantasy, a narrative of the moment that seeks to pit bloc against bloc. Here, in this chamber, there are only women and men, who do not share the same religions, who think differently, whose civilizations are sometimes different, but who one day decided that building peace, meeting the challenges of inequality in particular or the great transitions of the world, required setting aside these differences in order to cooperate together.

That is why we must instead consolidate the existing rules and institutions that guarantee our collective authority and this effectiveness. Human rights remain the central pillar of the edifice of the United Nations and give coherence to the whole set of measures we take. In this period when conflicts are multiplying and spreading, we are also facing massive human rights crises. It is therefore the duty of us all to ensure respect for international humanitarian law, as we propose to do within the framework of the global initiative we are carrying forward with several counterparts — South Africa, Brazil, China, Jordan, Kazakhstan, and the ICRC. Let us support the International Criminal Court in its fight against impunity. Let us allow the rulings of the International Court of Justice to be implemented.

The authority of law is our best chance against the law of the strongest; the application of principles is the only remedy to the double standards that so many of us have come to denounce from this podium, before this assembly, ever since we made it the parliament of the world. Peace and security are for everyone.

That is why it is so important that Ukraine resist Russia and obtain a peace that deters Russia from further stealing its territory, its children, its wealth, and its future. Russian aggression is not Europe's problem but the problem of all of us here. It raises the eternal question of the authority of law versus the law of the strongest, of freedom versus imperialism. Ukraine did not want this war. It wants peace. France too wants peace, Europeans want peace, the United States of America wants peace. For this, Ukraine has a fundamental right: the right to live in security and no longer fear that Russia will attack it again. That is why France, together with the United Kingdom, built a coalition of the willing bringing together 35 nations to give Ukraine the guarantees essential to its security over the long term. In doing so, we are creating the conditions for a solid and just peace that will allow Ukrainians to fulfill their destiny. And what has happened in recent weeks in the airspace of Poland, dear President, of Romania, the provocations seen in Estonia or elsewhere, are further proof that all Europeans are being challenged by threats and attempts at destabilization by Russia that demand such unity.

Ukraine has often said so: it is ready for a ceasefire and accepts negotiation. It is now up to Russia to prove that it can choose peace, even as it multiplies attacks against civilians in Ukraine today and the provocations I have just mentioned. In the meantime, France will stand firmly alongside Ukraine, with its European partners and all those who understand the importance of defeating Russia in order to preserve the world order. I welcome the remarks made a few hours ago by the President of the United States of America, recalling the progressive weakening of the Russian economy, Russia's failures on the ground — imagine, in more than 1,000 days it has barely taken one percent of Ukrainian territory, despite so very many losses, so very many civilian casualties. I am pleased to see that the American President believes in Ukraine's capacity, not simply to hold on, but to assert its rights alongside us.

It is because it refuses double standards that France is committed alongside Ukraine, as it is for peace in the Middle East. Yesterday, we adopted a credible plan to end the war in Gaza and preserve a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine, to allow for the release of all hostages and save so very many lives. We have charted a path to peace that requires, above all else, that the hostages still held by Hamas be released and that strikes on Gaza cease. I am pleased that France and Saudi Arabia have convinced a great number of the members of this assembly to sign the New York Declaration. There are 142 of us members of this assembly reaching out to build a path to peace: immediate peace, release of the hostages, ceasefire, stabilization of Gaza, demilitarization and dismantling of Hamas, and mutual recognition — a demilitarized State of Palestine recognizing Israel, and a State of Israel recognizing a State of Palestine, and all the states of the region that have not yet done so likewise recognizing the State of Israel. Through this recognition, which is also a path to peace, it is also the stability of the entire region that we are seeking to build. There can be no security, no stability for Israel if it is conducting a permanent war with all its neighbors. Peace with Palestine in the West Bank and in Gaza and throughout Jerusalem.

Peace in Lebanon, where the fight against terrorism cannot be carried out at the expense of the sovereignty of the Lebanese people. And that is why I am pleased with the work we have carried out, hand in hand with the United States of America, with the United Nations and UNIFIL, to build this path that allows Lebanon's sovereignty to be restored, to put the Lebanese armed forces back in position with the support of UNIFIL, to recover this sovereignty point by point, and of course to build this monopoly on arms that only the Lebanese armed forces can hold. Lebanon breathes more easily when Hezbollah is weaker; Lebanon will breathe even more easily when all the arms caches, when all the weapons held by Hezbollah, are taken over by the Lebanese armed forces. There is no other choice. France will accordingly soon convene a conference in support of Lebanon's reconstruction, and we will also support the conference our Saudi friends will hold in support of the Lebanese armed forces.

Likewise, Syria must recover its unity and its sovereignty. Syria is freer since the Assad regime fell. I received the transitional president in Paris, I will see him again tomorrow, and together with several states in the region, we are working to ensure that Syria can respect all the components of its civil society, which are its strength, its lifeblood, and at the same time, by recovering this unity, can also regain full control of its sovereignty. And then, the region can only be at peace if the Iranian nuclear program, which has been partially destroyed, is once again fully controlled. That is why France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have, by common agreement, triggered the process leading to the restoration of all the international sanctions previously imposed on Iran. Iran alone bears responsibility for failing to meet its obligations, but it can still decide to open its doors to the IAEA, to shed light on its stock of enriched uranium, and to accept new negotiations. The coming hours will be decisive. Either Iran makes a gesture, re-engages on a path of peace and responsibility, allowing this path to be found again, allowing the IAEA to do its work, and allowing the stockpile to be transferred accordingly. Or the sanctions will have to apply. I will have the opportunity to discuss this tomorrow with President Pezeshkian.

On each of these crucial issues, France is putting forward concrete solutions. The plan to end the war in Ukraine exists. The plan to make peace in the Middle East exists. The plan to bring the Iranian nuclear program back under control exists. The plan to restore full sovereignty to Lebanon in the south exists. In each case, we want to be the partner of all those who share this demand to act effectively.

And yet, there is also the risk that we grow weary of acting and look away from too much distress. The humanitarian tragedy currently unfolding in Sudan is without doubt the gravest of all today. It is our collective duty to mobilize, as we did in Paris in 2024. Let us coordinate our efforts to act together, so that the belligerents accept negotiation and hand power back to civilians.

Likewise, in the Great Lakes region, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Democratic Republic of the Congo must be respected. Hope must be restored to the population of the Kivus and to the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced. That is also why we will convene next month in Paris all those who can respond to the humanitarian emergency and bring the peace initiatives together. I welcome what has been carried out by the African Union, by so many neighboring countries, by Qatar, by the United States of America. But the humanitarian emergency, there too, is essential.

We must not forget any of these conflicts. We have no right, at any moment, to become discouraged. This capacity to rise to the occasion is our strength; it is what brought us together eight decades ago. We have no right to fatigue in this moment we are living through. Having listed, without claiming to be exhaustive, so many crises, I look with you, clear-eyed, at the world in which we live. We see everywhere the risks of proliferation returning and new threats re-emerging without any collective framework.

There is also an urgent need to rebuild a credible, verifiable framework to fight all nuclear proliferation, to rebuild a credible framework to once again contain ballistic threats and proliferation. I do not forget chemical and biological threats, and I do not forget the new risks — those involving artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cyber, or space. So many threats for which our existing common frameworks have been weakened in recent years. Sometimes because some have rendered them obsolete, other times because verification rules have not been duly observed, also because technological acceleration means that innovation capacities are moving faster than our existing frameworks. On all these points, we have no right to give ground.

Our responsibility is to move forward and to build this indispensable framework for peace. It is the same demand for effectiveness, the same effective multilateralism, that we must bring to the great global challenges that are ours. I know the attention the Secretary-General devotes to this, and I want to thank him for the ambition he has shown for our organization through the UN80 initiative. I share this concern.

Yes, in this moment of disorder that I have described regarding the great questions of peace and war, we must not forget that we have so many global challenges that require this same spirit of cooperation. Let us look squarely at our great global imbalances. They affect all economies — certainly the richest, and I speak on behalf of one of them — but even more so the middle-income countries, the developing countries, and of course the poorest. If we fail to have an organized international conversation on the great imbalances of the planet, if we respond to them in a scattered and uncooperative manner, we will worsen them. Today, our challenge is to see how to help China develop the domestic demand it so badly needs. How can we try to ensure that the remarkable production capacities it has managed to develop in recent years, these technological capacities, which are sometimes the subject of technology transfers, are also accompanied by a harmonious development of its domestic market? How can we address today's American trade imbalances cooperatively rather than through tariffs that will fracture our international trade? And how can we ensure that Europe manages to meet the collective investment needs that are ours today?

These challenges require us to have cooperation among major economies, but also that we not pit the G7 against the BRICS — and that is the whole agenda we are setting for the French G7 presidency in 2026, in connection of course with the current Canadian presidency of the G7 and the successive presidencies of the G20.

We must recover this spirit of cooperation, which is indispensable, because it is also what will allow us to have a common agenda to finance the global challenges that are ours. Let us look at ourselves today. We are everywhere reducing our common ambitions to finance the great challenges of the world. A decline in collective financing for health, a decline in collective financing for food security, a decline in collective financing for education. And yet these challenges are ours, as much as, and even more than, they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.

So it is absolutely essential that, collectively, we know how to build concrete solutions, new financing, to do so. Europeans have decided to mobilize, and I thank the President of the Commission, who gave a strong speech on this subject and is mobilizing the financing instruments that we Europeans have put together to respond to these great challenges. But we must also do so within a renewed framework — the one we tried to build together during the pandemic itself, with our African partners, at the financing summit we jointly built in 2021. The one we continued together at the 4P summit, where we built this pact for the prosperity of peoples and the planet. At bottom, with the same agenda. We must, together, cooperate better in the face of global economic imbalances. We must build a growth agenda everywhere.

But we must also do so in order to help countries finance efforts in education, health, stabilization, and food security, and to meet the challenges of biodiversity and climate. Let us move beyond this dilemma of having to choose between growth on the one hand and climate and biodiversity on the other. We can do it if we know how to mobilize public and private financing within a framework that brings together East, West, South, and North. That is the framework we have built. It requires us now to accelerate the transition that has begun to be carried out — and I want to thank the leaders of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for this. But we must go further. These frameworks have already become obsolete. We need to mobilize more private financing to accompany these transitions — in middle-income countries, in developing countries, in the poorest countries. We need to build guarantee mechanisms, first-loss coverage mechanisms. We need to mobilize more private financing to come into these countries and help them grow. This is essential if we want to avoid tomorrow's crises and destabilizations.

This agenda is one that unites us and that, in a way, draws some out of their selfishness and prevents others from being left alone to face the challenges that are theirs. That is also why we must continue, whatever ill winds may blow, to mobilize in the face of the challenges of biodiversity and climate. As I said, we have managed together to build victories in recent months. The Nice Treaty, which was able to enter into force thanks to collective mobilization, will finally give a regulatory framework to our oceans. This had been awaited for decades. It is this same collective mobilization that we must bring to plastics — to build an international treaty aimed at ending plastic pollution. It is this same mobilization we must bring to deploying biodiversity credits much more effectively and to giving greater substance to our carbon credits. It is this same mobilization we need with a view to the COP in Belém.

I say it here: Europe and France will be there. They will meet the 2035 targets assigned to us. They will also be there to mobilize all financing, public and private, to carry out this transition. We have no right, here too, to turn away from the objectives we have set for ourselves. We have no right, in a sense, to retreat. As you will have understood, all these global challenges — education, health, agriculture, food security, biodiversity, climate, the fight on every front against all the inequalities that destabilize our world order — require this same spirit of cooperation that I spoke of regarding wars and destabilizations.

Our challenge is that crises are multiplying, accumulating, and that my speech, already too long, is nonetheless very incomplete. But rest assured, I will stop there. But let me say this to you with great force. Despite all this, this long list, which sometimes gives the feeling that we could be overwhelmed, our duty is to remain standing and to continue acting together. Eighty years ago, those who came before us faced collapse; the war was not yet over; the worst had just happened; an already divided world was taking shape — and they decided to build this treasure that is the United Nations. One could burden our Assembly with plenty of criticism, including criticism that is not entirely fair.

This Assembly is us. If it is ineffective, it is because a few are blocking it — and often the most powerful. If it does not move fast enough, it is because we are not determined enough to make it move forward. The United Nations is all of us. There is one thing: we have no right to cynicism. We have no right to fatigue. We have no right to a spirit of defeat. Because our world is there, before us. The risk we run is that of fragmentation, of the law of the strongest, of the fait accompli, of cynicism, and in a sense, of loss of control. Yes, that is exactly it: loss of control.

This is what our peoples are experiencing everywhere. Fear in the face of a future they no longer control. Fear in the face of migrations suffered by some. Fear in the face of a climate we can no longer control. Fear in the face of inequalities we can no longer stabilize. Fear in the face of a war we cannot manage to stop. This fear has only one friend: the strongest, who created the conditions for it. The cynic who thinks he can get by, sheltered, among the few who succeed. We, for our part, have only one responsibility: to act together. To rebuild this effective multilateralism once again. With the same faith, the same determination as the founding fathers of this assembly.

To do it with even greater effectiveness, but with the same will.

To give no ground to injustice.

To give no ground to fatalism. Act. Act. Act.

So it is up to us to do it. Together.

Thank you.