First of all, let me start by congratulating my friend and colleague Abdulla Shahid on assuming the presidency of the General Assembly at its seventy-sixth session. I wish him the best of luck. He will be leading the Assembly through tough times, but he can be assured of Hungary’s full support.
It is great to meet again in person in the General Assembly and that this general debate is not taking place in a virtual format. This is the essence of diplomacy: we meet each other, we talk to each other, and we do our best to overcome our challenges.
This last year and a half were full of challenges, troubles and problems. The situation has improved a bit, but we do have to be aware that the crisis is not yet over. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has created a very uncertain situation. Nevertheless, I have to commend the fantastic achievement of the global research community, which was able to find the answer within a year and half, the answer to this global challenge being vaccination.
To put it more directly, vaccination is the only and exclusive answer because only vaccination can protect us. We must express our appreciation, gratitude and respect to all the doctors, researchers and volunteers who have taken part in those projects at the end of which a vaccine was created.
The pandemic is an attack on the entire globe, an attack on all nations and all citizens. Since the attack is global, the defence has to be global as well, which means that we have to enable ourselves to vaccinate — to give vaccine to — everybody. This is a matter of capacity. In order to be able to complete a successful protection action, we have to make sure that vaccine is going to be produced in the greatest number of possible locations around the world, and that the greatest amount of vaccine is produced.
Vaccine is a tool to save the lives of people. It is not an ideological tool. Nor is it a political matter. Saving people’s lives must be neither ideological nor political. That is why we urge the regulators and the international, regional and national authorities to carry out purely professional and fact-based procedures when they are approving different types of vaccines. We urge them to leave political aspects completely out of the calculation.
It has also become obvious that the pandemic constitutes not only a health-care crisis, but an economic crisis as well. The pandemic has unfortunately had serious economic consequences. In the last year and a half year, 114 million people have lost their jobs. The global flow of direct investment has decreased by 42 per cent, and there was a 5.3 per cent reversal when it comes to the volume of global trade. All these phenomena resulted in the establishment of a new global economic order.
Today, our most important duty is to save jobs. We must replace as many jobs as possible — at least the jobs that were lost — and we must create new ones. In the meantime, we have to ensure that people make a living from work and not from social assistance. Social assistance has put people in an indefensible position: it makes people vulnerable, and it brings States to the brink of insolvency.
In contrast, work brings dignity and a predictable future. People who work create value and create economic performance. During a year and half of pandemic, we had to think in particular about families with children, because parents in those contexts have had to bear a double burden. They had to go to work in order to keep the country running, but they also had to look after their kids, whose schools and kindergartens were closed. As a result, in Hungary, we made a decision. Since the growth of our national economy will reach 5.5 per cent at the end of the year, we will fully reimburse the personal income tax paid by families who are raising children throughout 2021.
I would now like to draw the Assembly’s attention to another consequence of COVID-19. A large part of our life has been pushed into the digital space. Parents who were not able to go to work had to work from home, and their children had to take part in digital education, resulting in a vulnerable and unexperienced group of users of the digital space. This sort of group is a perfect target for cybercrime. That is why we urge putting together strict international regulations that can protect our children and our families from the spread of extremist ideologies and sexual propaganda on the Internet and from cyberbullying.
We must be aware that if we are not able to tackle the challenge of COVID-19, we will be unable to address even more serious challenges in future. If we cannot ensure vaccination for everybody on the spot and if we cannot tackle economic challenges, then there will be further massive migratory waves.
Together, the pandemic and migration construct a kind of vicious circle. The more serious the health- and economic-related impacts of COVID-19 there are, the more people will take to the road — the more people will migrate and the more they will contribute to migratory flows, further accelerating the spread of the virus.
Nowadays migration constitutes not only already well-known cultural, civilizational and security risks, but it also constitutes very serious health-care risks as well. That is one of the many reasons why we have to speak about Afghanistan in this Hall yet again.
We do have to admit, unfortunately, that, after 20 years in Afghanistan, the international community had a big failure in the country. At some point in future, we will have to analyse — once and for all — the mistakes that were committed and the poor decisions that were made in this regard. But now the main duty is to mitigate the damage. We have to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorist organizations once again. We have to prevent additional migratory flows coming from Afghanistan, because such flows imply a direct security threat for both Afghanistan’s neighbours and the entire European continent.
We have to strengthen the global fight the use of terrorism. In that connection, the United Nations should play an important role, but it will not be able to do so as long as the finances of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism are not part of the regular budget.
In Europe, everyone remembers what happened in 2015. After the irresponsible statements by some political leaders, millions of migrants hit the road towards Europe. The impact and the consequences are clear. Many terrorists have taken advantage of the chance to hide among migrants. Parallel societies have been created in some European countries. Programmes for social integration have failed. Some parts of big European capitals became no-go zones, and wars were launched among gangs. A loud minority started to oppress the silent majority.
It is no wonder that European leaders now say that they do not want to commit the same mistakes that were made back in 2015. However, they are making the same kinds of decisions and the same kinds of statements. When they encourage Afghans to leave their homeland, it leaves the position of neighbouring countries that know the situation best totally out of consideration. What do those neighbouring countries say? They say that the challenges in Afghanistan must be solved in Afghanistan. That approach by neighbouring countries should definitely be followed.
Hungary has already fulfilled its moral duty. We have evacuated all Afghans who helped and assisted our troops during their stay in Afghanistan in the framework of the international mission. About 400 Afghans, including their family members, are now in Hungary, and we will definitely take care of them.
But there is a full stop at the end of the sentence. We will not receive anyone else. We will protect our border. We will withstand the pressure. And we will continue to stick to our own right to make our own decisions on whom we will allow to enter the territory of our country and whom we are ready to live with.
Back in 2015, we rejected the introduction of an obligatory quota for the distribution of migrants, and we will do the same now. We will reject any kind of quota system of distribution in any framework. After 2015, everyone must understand that migratory flows constitute significant risks, and on many occasions are dangerous.
I remember 2018, when we debated the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. There were five countries, including my own, that voted against it. At the time, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration described migration as though it had only positive aspects and broad benefits. Now, three years later, I think everyone can admit that approach has totally failed.
Instead of encouraging people to leave their homes, hit the road, take advantage of the help of smugglers — whose activities can sometimes barely be differentiated from those of so-called non-governmental organizations — and put their lives at risk, we should send help to where it is needed. We have to create circumstances that make it possible for everyone to stay where they were living before.
That approach is reflected in a development programme of the Hungarian Government called Hungary Helps, through which we help Christian communities that suffer from persecution. With the help of $70 million provided to such programmes, we have ensured that 250,000 Christians in the Middle East, Africa and Asia were able to either return to their homes or stay there. If we had brought them to
Europe, we would have contributed to the fulfilment of the goals of terrorist organizations, one of which is to eliminate those Christian communities. We have rebuilt their churches and their houses, we have covered the operational costs of their hospitals and we have rebuilt their schools, thereby helping them to stay where their communities have been living for centuries.
Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a lot of hardship and suffering in the past year and a half, but it also definitely brought about an opportunity. It has shown how interdependent we are. The successful protective measures of one country can help another to be protected as well.
Therefore, the COVID-19 pandemic brought hope for better cooperation among the nations of the world — a world that is unfortunately full of tensions nowadays. We have to do our best to overcome those tensions, but we will not be able to do so without more pragmatic, effective and respect-based cooperation between East and West. Based on historic experience, we Central Europeans are well aware of the significance of that.