It is an honour for me to be here among Member States at the General Assembly for the first time. I come from Chile, which is a beautiful country located in the extreme south of Latin America between the Andes Mountains, the backbone of our continent, and the majestic and imposing Pacific Ocean. It is a country that has a varied geography and stirring landscapes, where the clearest skies coexist with the stormiest seas and the driest desert with cities carved by rain.
As some of those present perhaps know, the Chilean people are hard-working and supportive. Thanks to their efforts, in just over two centuries we have gone from being Spain’s poorest colony in Latin America to being an independent, free, sovereign and thriving country, which today, with its tremendous opportunities, is on the threshold of comprehensive development, and we are working to ensure that this is for everyone and not just for a few. Chile has copper and lithium for electromobility and is a developing innovative corridor country, promoting clean energy to the world, with long coasts and protected marine areas to safeguard the environment and with top-level universities to foster and share knowledge.
I have come to tell colleagues that Chile needs the world, and that the world also needs Chile. But as Member States know and as has been clear in the addresses before mine, we live in a time of deep uncertainty and upheavals, in which it is clear that there is no nation among all those represented here that is isolated from, or immune to, shocks and what is happening globally. Our country is certainly no exception. The unfair war of aggression that Russia unleashed on Ukraine, with whose people we express our solidarity, pushed up fuel prices and caused shortages of grains and fertilizers, with a strong impact on our economy and that of many States. In addition, while it is harder to talk about, the trade war between the United States and China, unleashed under the Trump Administration in 2018, as well as the pandemic destabilized the global economy, affecting our economy as well as that of other Member States.
At another level, the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, as a result of its already prolonged political crisis, has generated an unprecedented migratory flow in our region and our country, putting tremendous pressure on our institutions and society.
Finally, as many Member States are clearly experiencing, the climate crisis has a particularly strong impact on our Latin American continent, and especially the Caribbean, as well as the livelihoods of our people. In Chile, we meet seven of the nine vulnerability criteria established by the United Nations: low-level coastal areas, arid and semi-arid areas, forests, propensity to natural disasters, droughts, polluted urban areas and fragile mountain ecosystems. However, our country, no doubt like many Member States present and a large part of the global South, produces and is responsible for a tiny share — in our case 0.24 per cent — of global greenhouse-gas emissions, while the countries with the biggest economies, the Group of 20, as the Secretary-General recalled, produce 80 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions. As is evident, these days no country, whether big or small, weak or powerful, can expect to save itself on its own.
While we were preparing this speech, I was thinking about how, among so many clearly interesting statements regarding the specific reality of each country, we could contribute a grain of sand to the building of the fairest possible world. Aware of the fact I am not the one to give lessons on each of the problems of the turbulent world in which we live, I thought that relating our recent experience as a country could help those who want to listen to learn from it.
Chile is currently undergoing an intense political process. Almost three years ago, we faced a serious political and social crisis. During those days, a great majority of Chileans expressed their unease about the inequality and mistreatment, their indignation at the long waits for public health care, their disgust at the millions of dollars in student debts and their rejection
of meagre pensions after long years of work. That is perhaps a familiar story for many of those here.
In a few months, it will be 50 years since President Salvador Allende, from this very rostrum where I have the honour to be today, gave an account of the important social and political changes that our country was undergoing (see A/PV.2096). We are a country that has long been searching for its own path to dignity. While poverty has been significantly reduced and there has been significant progress on social issues during the democratic Governments of the past 30 years, it is undeniable that the development model adopted in Chile has preserved a high degree of wealth, making us one of the most unequal countries in the world, which grieves us.
As clearly also happens in many developing countries, that inequality has not only hindered our path to development but is also a potential threat to democracy, since the fracture in society destroys social cohesion, thereby hampering our understanding of each other and our building together a freer and fairer future.
The social upheaval that Chile experienced in 2019 perplexed many observers, including some represented here, who were asking what had happened in the country, as well as actors in national life. Many were struck by the fact that a country that had achieved significant levels of economic growth and human development, showing significant improvements in the quality of life of its population, was at the same time faced with such a profound crisis.
Unfortunately, what happened in my homeland was not accidental, but the consequence of countless stories of pain and procrastination that were brewing and affecting the very heart of our society. I want to say that, even if it is not expected, that can also happen in the countries of other Member States. That is why I ask that we, together, be proactive in the pursuit of greater social justice. A better distribution of wealth and power must go hand in hand with sustainable growth. I am deeply convinced that, with the participation of Member States, it is possible, and it is an urgent need.
Regrettably, I must say this today because each of us cannot come and just talk about good things. That discontent also expressed itself in serious incidents of violence, such as fires in metro stations and the vandalization of civic buildings.
Meanwhile, we witnessed uncontrolled repression, which resulted in deaths, injuries and more than 400 people suffering eye injuries as a result of the State’s action, which, in the view of our Government and various international organizations, represents a serious human rights violation that must be redressed, and it will be.
It was that long history of injustice that manifested itself in our country from October to December 2019. But — and this is the good news — history lasts longer than those of us who today hold these positions and the long history of citizen mobilization and social struggles, which enabled the return to democracy and the reunion of democrats, as President Aylwin said at the end of the previous century, and which at the dawn of the twentieth century allowed progress in workers’ rights. In the peaceful protests of 2019, there were also women from the previous century who, despite everything, advanced women’s right to vote. The memories of the workers who achieved the right to rest and the settlers who fought, and continue to fight, for decent housing accompanied us. All those memories and social struggles were present.
The values behind that deep discontent — equality, justice and freedom — are not unrelated to a demand that we see increasingly frequently around the world and from this rostrum. The protection and promotion of human rights everywhere and by every Government, decent work, universal social protection and the fight against the climate crisis are today universal demands that are the focus of Our Common Agenda (A/75/982), led by our Secretary-General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The way forward for a peaceful and democratic solution to the crisis in our country was an important agreement between the main political forces that developed a path towards the drafting of a new constitution, capable of laying the foundations of a new social contract. That path, driven by Chilean society from protest and social struggle and politically channelled by various institutions, was endorsed by a plebiscite, where 80 per cent of voters supported a new constitution, to be written by a specifically elected body.
The challenge is not a small one. It consists of achieving, as never before in our history, a democratic constitution, drafted with the participation of citizens and indigenous peoples and gender parity — a constitution for all, but also made by all.
A few weeks ago, the work accomplished by the Constitutional Convention between 2021 and 2022 was submitted to citizen consultation by means of a plebiscite, in which Chileans participated on a massive scale, with 85 per cent participation. In that electoral event, we citizens clearly rejected the proposal by 62 per cent versus 38 per cent. Today, as a country, we are therefore looking for new formulas to build this meeting place for all Chileans.
My personal decision in the plebiscite was to vote for the proposal for a new constitution, but the result was the opposite. Some saw the result of the plebiscite as a defeat for the Government. In all humility, I wish to say to them today at the United Nations that a Government can never feel defeated when the people speak out. In a democracy, the people’s word is sovereign and is the guide at all times.
Why am I talking about this? Because, unlike in the past, when differences in Chile were resolved by blood and fire, today we Chileans agree to overcome our challenges democratically.
I am talking about this because I am sure that one of the main challenges for humankind today is building democracies that truly speak and listen to the people and achieve the desired results. Those of us attending this Assembly have the duty to improve our democracies.
Ms. Kamina Johnson Smith (Jamaica),
Vice-President, took the Chair.
During the many days of mobilization, the word dignity resounded. The Chilean people expressed themselves, giving us a lesson in democracy, which we are learning. Chile has called on its democracy and its political actors to rise to their demands and the challenges of today, which we too must meet.
As a Government, we received the results of the recent plebiscite with our eyes and hearts wide open. We want to hear what the people are telling us because we trust in their judgment and their will. There are things that we understood very clearly, which I want to briefly share. The results are the expression of a citizenry that demands changes without jeopardizing its current achievements and that wants a better future, built seriously and without succumbing to new insecurities — a future of change with stability.
As a young person who not long ago was protesting on the street, I can say that representing unrest is much easier than providing solutions for it. Those of us devoted to the demanding work of politics often easily confuse our successes as spokespeople for citizen annoyance with our real capacity to be builders of better futures. The outcome of our country’s plebiscite has taught us to be humbler — democracy should be humble — and to realize that, in building the Chile of which we dream, no given sector has the recipe. Rather, it is a mixture, combining the best that each of us can contribute. In the twenty-first century, we govern by mobilizing the capacities and wisdom of our societies, not by trying to replace them.
As President of Chile, I am convinced that very soon Chile will have a constitution that satisfies us and makes us proud, built on democracy that brings together the contributions of all sectors of society and is able to reflect our aspirations for justice and liberty.
From the humble history of my country, I can say with deep conviction that the path to overcoming the problems that afflict our societies is paved with more democracy, not with less, encouraging, and not limiting, participation, fostering dialogue, never censoring it, and, above all, respecting those who think differently, including their points of view and understanding that having different opinions does not make us enemies. I rebel against the chasm that some try to dig around legitimately diverse views. We in Chile declare our will to be builders of bridges across such gaps, which prevent us from seeing ourselves as diverse societies.
That is the experience and learning that, from our small country, we want to share with the nations of the world. Deepening democracy is an ongoing exercise, in which we can only persevere and each learn from the experience of others.
In conclusion, I therefore call on Member States to work together to strengthen democracy in all spaces, in every country and in relations among us. In Latin America, we need a united voice and more common work by the global South. We need a modernized United Nations, where we all have the same goals,
Based on multilateralism, justice and peace at all times and in all places, we must commit to taking the necessary actions, not just making statements, so as to stop Russia’s unjust war on Ukraine and put an end to all abuses by the powerful everywhere in the world. We must commit to mobilizing our efforts to stop violence against women, be it in Iran in memory of Mahsa Amini, who died at the hands of the police this week, or anywhere in the world. We must
commit to not normalizing the ongoing human rights violations against the Palestinian people by upholding international law and the resolutions adopted by this very Assembly that support their inalienable right to establish their own free, sovereign State, as well as to ensuring Israel’s legitimate right to live within secure and internationally recognized borders. We must commit to continuing to work for the release of political prisoners in Nicaragua and to ensure that nowhere in the world can having ideas that differ from those of the Government in power end in persecution or human rights violations.
The whole world is calling for change and, like those before us, we, as part of the new generations, have the right and responsibility to think about and realize a different future. Citizens who suffer the most from the consequences of societies built on segregation and abuse demand rights and a safe life. We can achieve that world of greater well-being only through increased democracy. That is the call that today we must all heed. In Chile, we are ready to collaborate in every part of the world to that end.