I would like to greet the President of the General Assembly. Ambassador Dennis Francis of Trinidad and Tobago. It is also a great pleasure to be preceded by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. I acknowledge all the Heads of State and Government and representatives present. I pay tribute to our compatriot Sergio Vieira de Mello and the 21 other staff members of the Organization who fell victim to the brutal attack in Baghdad 20 years ago. I also would also like to express my condolences to the victims of the earthquake in Morocco and the storms that struck Libya. Like the recent events in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in my country, those tragedies have claimed lives and caused irreparable losses. Our thoughts and prayers are with all the victims and their families.
Exactly 20 years ago. I stood at this rostrum for the first time and said, on 23 September 2003.
“Let my first words before this world parliament be of confidence in the human capacity to overcome challenges and to move towards higher forms of partnership” (A/58/PV.7, p.5).
I return today to say that I maintain my unshakable trust in humankind. At that time, the world had not yet realized the severity of the climate crisis. Today it is at our doorstep, destroying our homes, cities and countries, killing people and causes losses and suffering for our brothers, especially the poorest.
Hunger — the central theme of my statement at this world parliament 20 years ago — today affects 735 million human beings, who will go to sleep tonight without knowing if they will have anything to eat tomorrow. The world is increasingly unequal. The 10 richest billionaires have more wealth than the poorest 40 per cent of humankind. The destiny of every child born on the planet seems to be decided while they are still in their mother’s womb. The part of the world where their parents live and the social class to which their family belongs will determine whether or not they will have opportunities throughout their life; whether they will eat at every meal or they will be denied the right to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day; whether they will have access to health care or they will succumb to diseases that could have already been eradicated; whether they will finish school and get a decent job or they will be numbered among the countless unemployed, underemployed and discouraged people. First of all. we must overcome our resignation, which makes us accept such unfairness as a natural phenomenon. There is a lack of political on the part of those who govern the world to overcome inequality.
If today I have returned in the honourable capacity as President of Brazil, it is thanks to the victory won through democracy in my country. Democracy ensured that we overcame hate, misinformation and oppression. Hope, once again, has won over fear. Our mission is to ignite Brazil and rebuild a sovereign, fair, sustainable, supportive, generous and joyful country with solidarity. Brazil has once again found its place within our region, the world and multilateralism. As I never tire of repeating. Brazil is back. Our country is back to make its rightful contributions to facing the major global challenges. We have reclaimed our foreign policy’s universalism, marked by respectful dialogue with everyone. The international community has been immersed in a flood of multiple and simultaneous crises. The coronavirus disease pandemic, the climate crisis and food and energy insecurity have been amplified by growing geopolitical tensions. Racism.
intolerance and xenophobia have spread, encouraged by new technologies that were created supposedly to bring us closer together. If we had to summarize those challenges in a single word, it would be “inequality”. Inequality is at the root of those phenomena and serves to aggravate them.
The United Nations broadest and most ambitious collective action aimed at development, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, could turn into its greatest failure. We have reached the mid-point of the implementation period and are still far from achieving its defined goals. Most of the Sustainable Development Goals are moving at a slow place. The moral and political imperative of eradicating poverty and ending hunger appears to have been numbed. In the seven years that we have left, reducing inequalities within and among countries should become the core objective of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Reducing inequalities within countries requires providing for the poor in Government budgets and making the rich pay taxes that are proportional to their wealth. In Brazil, we are committed to implementing all 17 Sustainable Development Goals in an integrated and indivisible manner. We want to achieve racial equality in Brazilian society through an eighteenth goal, which we will voluntarily adopt.
We launched the Brazil zero-hunger programme, which will bring together a series of initiatives to reduce poverty and food insecurity, including the Bolsa Familia Programme, which has become a global reference for income transfer programmes for families who keep their children vaccinated and in school. Inspired by Brazilian Bertha Lutz, a pioneer in and advocate for gender equality and the Charter of the United Nations, we have adopted a bill that makes equal pay between women and men mandatory when they perform the same roles. We will fight femicide and all forms of violence against women. We will strongly advocate for the rights of LGBTQI+ groups and people with disabilities. We have revived social participatory practices as a strategic tool for implementing public policies.
Taking action against climate change involves thinking about tomorrow and facing historical inequalities. Rich countries grew, based on a model with high rates of climate-damaging emissions. The climate emergency makes it urgent to correct course and implement what has already been agreed. There is no other reason why we speak of common but differentiated responsibilities. It is the vulnerable populations in the global South who are most affected by the loss and damage caused by climate change.
The richest 10 per cent of the world’s population is responsible for almost half of all carbon that is released into the atmosphere. We. the developing countries, do not want to repeat that model. In Brazil, we have already proved once and will prove again that a socially fair and environmentally sustainable model is possible. We are at the forefront of an energy transition, and our matrix is already one of the cleanest in the world. Some 87 per cent of our electrical power comes from clean and renewable sources. Solar, wind, biomass, ethanol and biodiesel power generation is growing every year. The potential for generating green hydrogen is immense. With the ecological transformation plan, we will invest in sustainable industrialization and sustainable infrastructure. We have renewed the sound Amazon Agenda with oversight actions aimed at combating environmental crime.
Over the past eight months, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has already been reduced by 48 per cent. The entire world has always talked about the Amazon, and now the Amazon is speaking for itself. A month ago. we hosted the Belem Summit meeting in the heart of the Amazon and launched a new collaboration agenda among countries that are part of that biome. There are 50 million South Americans living in the Amazon whose future depends on the decisive coordination and action by the countries that hold sovereignty over the region’s territories.
We also have continued our dialogue with other countries that have tropical forests in Africa and Asia. We want to arrive at the twenty-eighth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Dubai, with a joint vision that reflects, without any coaching, priorities for preserving the Amazon, the Congo and Borneo-Mekong basins, based on our needs.
Without mobilizing financial and technological resources, there is no way to implement what we decided in the Paris Agreement and the global biodiversity framework. The promise to allocate $100 billion annually to developing countries remains just that — a promise. Today that amount would be insufficient for the demand, which already reaches trillions of dollars.
The principle on which multilateralism is based — that of the sovereign equality of nations — is being eroded. At the main global governance levels.
negotiations in which all countries have a voice and vote have lost momentum. When institutions reproduce inequalities, they are part of the problem, not the solution.
Last year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made available $160 billion in special drawing rights to European countries and just $34 billion to African countries. The unequal and distorted representation of the management of the IMF and the World Bank is unacceptable. We have not corrected the excesses of market deregulation and support for the ideology of the minimum state. The foundations of a new economic governance have not been laid. The Brazil. Russian Federation. India. China and South Africa (BRICS) group was the result of that paralysis and constitutes a strategic platform to promote cooperation among emerging countries.
The recent expansion of the group at the Johannesburg summit meeting strengthens the fight for an order that accommodates the economic, geographical and political plurality of the twenty-first century. We are a force that works towards fairer global trade in the context of a serious crisis of multilateralism. The rich countries’ protectionism has gained strength, and the World Trade Organization remains paralysed, in particular its dispute-settlement system. No one remembers the Doha Development Round anymore. Meanwhile, unemployment and precarious work have been undermining people’s confidence in better times, especially the youth.
Governments must stem the increase in dissonance between the voice of the markets and the voice of the streets. Neoliberalism has aggravated the economic and political inequality that plagues democracies today. Its legacy is a mass of disenfranchised and excluded people. Amid the wreck, far-right adventurers emerge, who deny politics and sell solutions that are as easy as they are wrong. Many have fallen to the temptation of replacing failed neoliberalism with primitive, conservative and authoritarian nationalism.
We reject an agenda that uses immigrants as scapegoats, undermines the welfare State and attacks workers’ rights. We need to reclaim the best humanist traditions that inspired the creation of the United Nations. Active inclusion policies at the cultural, educational and digital levels are fundamental for promoting democratic values and defending the rule of law.
Preserving press freedom is essential. A journalist such as Julian Assange cannot be punished for informing society in a transparent and legitimate way. Our fight is against misinformation and cybercrime. Applications and platforms should not abolish the labour laws for which we fought so hard. Upon assuming the presidency of the Group of 20 next December, we will spare no effort to place the fight against inequality in all its dimensions at the core of the international agenda. Under the motto. “Building a just world and a sustainable planet”, the Brazilian presidency will coordinate social inclusion, combat hunger and promote sustainable development and the reform of global governance institutions.
There will be no sustainability or prosperity without peace. Armed conflicts are an offence to human rationality. We know the horrors and suffering caused by all wars. Promoting a culture of peace is a duty for all of us. Building it requires persistence and vigilance. It is disturbing to see that old. unresolved disputes persist and that new threats emerge or gain force. The difficulty of guaranteeing the creation of a State for the Palestinian people clearly shows that, not to mention the persistent humanitarian crisis in Haiti, the conflict in Yemen, threats to Libyan national unity and institutional ruptures in Burkina Faso. Gabon. Guinea- Conakry. Mali, the Niger and the Sudan. In Guatemala, there is a risk of a coup d’etat, which would prevent the winner of the democratic elections from taking office.
The war in Ukraine exposes our collective inability to enforce the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. We do not underestimate the difficulties of achieving peace, but no solution will be lasting if it is not based on dialogue. I have reiterated that work needs to be done to create space for negotiations.
Much is invested in weapons, and very little in development. Last year, military spending totalled more than $2 trillion. Expenditures on nuclear weapons reached $83 billion — a value 20 times higher than the regular United Nations budget. Stability and security will not be achieved where there is social exclusion and inequality. The United Nations was born to be the home of understanding and dialogue. The international community must choose: on the one hand, there is the expansion of conflicts, the furthering of inequalities and the erosion of the rule of law; on the other, there is the renewal of multilateral institutions dedicated to promoting peace.
Unilateral sanctions cause great harm to the populations of affected countries. In addition to not achieving their alleged goals, unilateral sanctions hinder mediation and prevention processes and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Brazil will continue to reject measures taken without the support of the Charter of the United Nations, such as the economic and financial embargo imposed on Cuba and the attempt to classify that country as a State sponsor of terrorism. We shall continue to criticize any attempt to divide the world into zones of influence and revive the Cold War.
The Security Council has been progressively losing its credibility. Its frailty is the specific result of the actions of its permanent members who wage unauthorized wars aimed at territorial expansion or regime change. The Council’s paralysis is the most eloquent proof of the urgent need to reform it. which will bring it greater representation and efficacy.
Inequalities need to inspire outrage — outrage over hunger, poverty, war and disrespect for human beings. Moved by the power of outrage, we may act willingly and unwaveringly in the fight against inequality and effectively transform the world around us. The United Nations needs to fulfil its role as a builder of a world with greater solidarity, fraternity and fairness, but it can do so only if its members have the courage to proclaim their discontent at inequality and work tirelessly to overcome it.