The Organization has a clear purpose, as spelled out in Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations, to maintain international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among nations, and to achieve international cooperation. Today, most Member States would probably agree that we are still far from achieving that goal. But that does not mean we should not try.
Each and every Member of the United Nations has a responsibility to protect peace. In this, the permanent members of the Security Council have a special duty. Instead, today we see one of the five permanent members openly denying the right of another United Nations Member, Ukraine, to exist as an independent State. Those who break the rules themselves have no authority to set rules for others through the power of veto. The wrongs of Russia’s aggression could not be clearer. One hundred forty-one countries deplored Moscow’s war against Ukraine in General Assembly resolution ES-11/1. No veto in the Security Council can change the fundamental truth that today, rather than protecting global peace, Russia is doing everything to undo it.
Moscow’s aggression has inflicted harm on the entire world. Thousands of innocent Ukrainian civilians have been killed. Millions have had to leave their homes, triggering one of the largest refugee crises in Europe’s history. Fifty million people are on the brink of starvation in Africa and Asia. Russia’s blockage of Ukraine’s ports and confiscation of its harvest have made the already grave global food crisis even worse.
We welcome the deal mediated by Secretary- General Guterres and Tiirkiye and we call on Russia to fully unblock all Ukraine’s ports. Otherwise, the world will continue to suffer. The democratic world and all of us must be a voice for Ukraine — the voice that will not be silent and that will continue to testify about Russia’s crimes in Ukraine. We must be the voice that will remember and that will act so that no one is ever allowed to commit such atrocities again.
Vladimir Putin hoped to conquer Ukraine and scare the rest of us. In that goal he has failed, as Ukraine’s recent successes on the battlefield demonstrate. We will rebuild peace. To do so, we must learn from our past mistakes. This is not the first time we have seen aggression in Europe. Russia has occupied parts of
Georgia since 2008 and parts of Ukraine since 2014. Our response to those actions was incomplete. Concerns about our own comfort weakened our resolve. The tepid sanctions we imposed failed to discourage Russia from trying again. Our weakness encouraged more aggression. We must not repeat the same mistake again. The flouting of rules is poisoning global security, and it must not be allowed to stand.
More than 50 countries, including all members of the European Union, have already imposed tough sanctions on Russia. Slovakia is Ukraine’s direct neighbour. Our own security is impacted by this war. We are neither the biggest nor the richest country in the world. We have long been dependent on Russia’s energy supplies. But we chose the protection of our fundamental rights. We have imposed sanctions on Russia and are supporting Ukraine, including through military aid, because Ukraine’s fight is just and defensive, and in line with international law. I invite all Member States to join. We should all help Ukraine politically, militarily and financially because that is the only way we can restore peace.
The war in Ukraine is not the only crisis exposing the gap between the rules and commitments we have agreed on and their practical realization. In November, we will hold the twenty-seventh Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in Egypt. But our actions lag dangerously behind our words. Our greenhouse gas emissions are not falling fast enough. How much more scorched Earth, how many millions more climate refugees, how many flood victims will it take to convince us that ignoring our commitments is no longer an option? We are desperately behind in cutting our emissions. Worse, we hear voices arguing that the climate crisis must wait because of increasing energy prices. That would be a grave mistake. Yes, the price increases are painful, and we must help those who risk losing access to energy, but we must not lose sight of the bigger picture.
We are talking about the rising prices of commodities that we must phase out anyway to stop the planet’s warming. Rather than bring back subsidies for coal or gas, we must transition away from them. Renewable energy is less dependent on those who are trying to use gas or oil as an energy weapon. And it is cheaper. Despite the current energy crisis, Slovakia will stop using coal as a source of energy next year. We are investing in renewables and launching a retrofitting programme for buildings to boost energy efficiency because the cheapest energy is the one you do not use. We can only do this together, globally and in solidarity with each other. We need all big economies to join and help those who need it. At this year’s COP27, we will need a significant increase of funds for lower- and middle-income countries. Many of them contribute very little to our planet’s heating but suffer the most from its consequences.
As the world community, we have put short-term comfort over lasting solutions when it comes to two crises: that of international peace and order, and that of our climate. But there is a third crisis of relativization of values, facts and expertise, as well as a decrease of trust in democratic institutions. We are facing an epidemic of lies, propaganda and disinformation. It is hardly new, but thanks to the rise of social media, it is more powerful. If algorithms favour hatred over truth or nonsense over science, and if they appeal to our instincts rather than the greater good, what hope is there for global understanding or for the sort of cooperation that the United Nations was created to advance? Democracies are tolerant by default, but they die if they start tolerating intolerance.
Along with the rest of the European Union, Slovakia leads the way for an effective and democratic regulation of major social platforms and online media. Online space should be guided by the same democratic rules that apply offline. We welcome United Nations initiatives for rules for State behaviour in cyberspace. The efforts towards a so-called Digital Geneva Convention are justified and needed.
The crises I mention have a disproportionate impact on women and girls. That plays out in higher rates of gender-based and domestic violence, greater economic insecurity and poverty or worse access to education and health care. However, I am not here to portray women as victims. I am here to call on all of them to step up their engagement in public affairs. Women are agents of change. The world has a collective responsibility to support them because we are already seeing the consequences of a world that is run without taking their unique and diverse experience into proper account.
Time has not been very favourable to the ideas that built and sustain the Organization. The peace we should safeguard is fraying. The international cooperation we should foster has not prevented a climate catastrophe. And the spirit of shared global commons that the United
Nations embodies is under attack from extremists, their voice multiplied by new technologies. Half measures are not enough to cope with those challenges. We have tried that before. It is time for action and for clarity.
We, the Members of the United Nations, need to clearly side with victim over aggressor. We must choose the international rules-based order over the power of the gun. We must urgently deliver on our climate goals and find working rules for social media platforms to protect the fabric of our societies and the international order. Sure, we can delay and compromise. But again, history teaches us that passivity and ignorance never solve crises; they only delay the moment of reckoning. And since obeying even the smallest of rules matters, let me finish here to respect the agreed time limit.