Mexico

Madam President:

It is a time for women. And Mexico has made this very clear following the overwhelming election of Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo as the first female President of our country. It is an honor for me to participate in this General Assembly on her behalf, and to be the voice of a government that is consolidating, in practice, the transformation of public life in Mexico.

I come from a country that was born from the wisdom, courage and dignity of its original peoples, with a rich political history of extraordinary heroes and heroines, who built a free, independent and sovereign country. Now also, it must be said, a country that is increasingly prosperous.

The Mexican people are a fraternal people, both at home and beyond their borders. They have shown this as an active and responsible member of the community of the United Nations, under the premise of defending the dignity and rights of individuals and of peace-loving nations, with full respect for the sovereign equality of states.

The historic moment we are living in Mexico, under the leadership of our first woman president, is rooted in a way of thinking we have called Mexican humanism. The path charted seven years ago is clear and has a universal calling: to consolidate a society in democracy, freedom, equality and shared prosperity. For the good of all, the poor first.

The guiding principle of the project is a vision of justice, a full recognition of the dignity of persons and inclusive social development, without discrimination. It is a project that establishes a division between political power and economic power; that advances in the exercise of a moral economy, that seeks coordination and cooperation with external actors, but does not accept any subordination. National sovereignty is non-negotiable.

This new way of doing politics has given voice and agency to those who had historically been relegated to oblivion and marginalization: women, girls, indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, young people, LGBT+ persons and older adults.

The results prove us right:

• The UN itself has recognized that 13.5 million Mexican women and men escaped poverty thanks to a policy of labor justice and social programs.
• Inequality is decreasing.
• Peace is being built and violence contained.
• Justice has come to the original peoples.
• There is democracy, freedoms, plurality and the right to dissent.
• Justice is being transformed and today, an indigenous person is president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.
• We have the largest reforestation program in the world, with 100 billion trees planted.
• Girls, boys and young people are enrolled in social programs and have access to school.
• Older adults have a guaranteed and universal pension.
• Women exercise power.

These are some of the strengths we have achieved in this Fourth Transformation of public life in Mexico, and it is worth expressing loudly from this podium.

As members of the international community, the challenges we face are enormous: poverty persists in a world of exorbitant wealth, there are countries that spend more on debt servicing than on the investments they could make in the health and education of their peoples, and spending on armaments has grown three times faster than the world economy, to mention a few.

The diagnosis has always been clear: the arms race, the immoral concentration of wealth, and violations of international law and human rights are the fuel that feeds war and violence.

Mexico has not forgotten the lessons of history. Eighty years ago we participated in the founding of the UN, convinced of the moral obligation we have as a nation to contribute to avoiding the scourge of wars.

It is no coincidence that many of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations are mirrored in the constitutional principles of our foreign policy: self-determination of peoples, peaceful settlement of disputes, the proscription of the threat or use of force, the legal equality of states, cooperation for development and the defense of human rights.

Without pretending to be exhaustive, allow me to share some premises that can contribute to finding a better course for the international community:

1) The world needs a moral economy of well-being

The mobilization of regional coalitions in favor of well-being is necessary, with the purpose of catalyzing effective cooperation for development that assumes that the fight against poverty is the investment with the best rate of return, financial and social; an international financial architecture that includes criteria of collective well-being and, trade based on clear rules with benefits shared among peoples.

2) Peace is built from the bottom up

Ensuring well-being means addressing the structural causes of violence and thus building peace from the bottom up. Conflict resolution often begins at home, continues in education, in decent employment with fair wages and social security, which allows the inclusion of the entire social fabric. The international community must review, with a more critical and innovative spirit, what young people today have as alternatives for life.

Likewise, it is the responsibility of the international community to put a stop to the arms race, not only of nuclear weapons, but also to the illicit trafficking of firearms and the whirlwind of arms spending, which feeds poverty and exacerbates conflict.

In the face of the deafening proliferation of weapons, politics, mediation, diplomacy, law and dialogue must be prioritized. The United Nations must play a much more active role in preventing and resolving these conflicts. Multilateralism must once again become the space in which disputes are settled. And this brings us to the third premise.

3) International law must be reaffirmed together with human rights

If we truly want to avoid the proliferation of conflicts that impact the life and dignity of people, we must respect international law, including international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

Whether in the Middle East, in Europe or anywhere else on the planet, war leaves a toll of intolerable suffering that, moreover, threatens to unleash an even greater military escalation, which could even become profoundly destructive on a global scale. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine must stop now.

We will not stop insisting on the urgent call for a ceasefire to achieve a negotiated solution, with the participation of all parties directly involved. The solution will have to be diplomatic, or it will hardly be a solution at all.

Mexico will always advocate for the peaceful resolution of conflicts and therefore rejects sanctions and trade blockades that only harm the well-being of peoples and do not build regions of either peace or prosperity. Without hesitation, we reaffirm our historic position against the blockade of Cuba and our call to remove this country from the list of those who support terrorism.

Respecting international law is the safeguard of peace. It is the antidote to a logic of power that harms the weakest nations. In the words of our Benefactor of the Americas, Benito Juárez García: everything for reason and law, nothing by force.

Madam President:

The struggle for justice is anchored in the conviction that we are all equal before the law; bound by fraternity to understand and respect one another as equals in dignity and rights.

Mexico has an unwavering commitment to human rights, freedoms and non-discrimination in the world. We condemn classism, racism and any form of discrimination, including discrimination based on sexual diversity and gender identity.

We particularly reject the criminalization of people who, for whatever reason, have had to leave their homes and find themselves needing to migrate, whether to seek refuge or to escape conditions of injustice or poverty.

For us, migrants are people with rights who care for their families and contribute their effort to enrich and strengthen their host communities. Migration is inherent to our species. Only by understanding the phenomenon and addressing its structural causes can we move toward a scheme of global and regional collaboration that allows us to advance toward safer and more orderly mobility.

Let there be no doubt: Mexico will not stop watching over and protecting Mexican men and women who are outside our country and who deserve all our support and the assistance they require.

Within this framework of justice and rights, we place the struggle of women and for gender equality, because despite progress, gaps persist, as does machista violence in the world, which strips freedoms from girls, young women and women in all their diversity.

Thirty years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the diagnosis and the roadmap are clear. We invite all nations to a mobilization that accelerates progress toward gender equality.

In my country, the transformation of consciousness has been intrinsically linked to the struggle for gender equality. Today in Mexico, gender parity prevails in the legislative and judicial branches, and public policies are designed with a strict gender perspective enshrined in our constitution.

Madam President:

Eighty years after its founding, the UN must recognize the serious crossroads it faces: it cannot remain sidelined. It must once again stand as an institution that contributes as much to containing warmongering as to preventing pandemics, or to building narratives that give rise to public policies in favor of human dignity.

Enough of getting lost in rituals of a diplomacy hollow of content and in the labyrinths of political simulation.

We believe the UN must return to its principles and its purposes; return to its fundamental foundations, which are the maintenance of international peace and security, sustainable development, and the protection and promotion of human rights.

These objectives must be redirected. Everything must revolve around this task, from the exercise of the budget to the review of the thousands of mandates we have given to the Secretariat, many of them of little value nowadays. The resources available to the Organization, increasingly limited, must be exercised with the greatest possible rigor.

The legitimacy of the UN will increasingly depend on its capacity to respond to the serious challenges the world faces. We trust that the next Secretary-General, whom we hope will be a woman from our region, will accelerate the process of transformation we have set in motion, with the aim of ensuring peace and justice, well-being and freedom for people, the sustainability of the planet and shared prosperity. In Mexico, it is a time for women, and it has gone very well for us. We believe that at the UN, it is also a time for women.