It is an honour for me to speak before the General Assembly on behalf of France.
I do so knowing how important our common Assembly is. this Assembly of all our nations, which have decided to freely unite their destinies and act for the common good. It is in that spirit that I speak before Member States — the spirit of those who. nearly eight decades ago. wanted from the rubble of the world to usher in a new era in relations among States; an era in which everyone understands that defending their own interests requires respect for common principles; and an era in which everyone understands that today’s strong can be tomorrow’s weak, where yesterday’s enemies can be today’s friends. That is the path that France and Germany have taken. It is an era in which power is framed by law. an era in which the common challenges of humankind are finally tackled together, rather than every man for himself.
That is what we have learned to do by overcoming in Europe centuries of conflict through cooperation and trust. It is that quest for the common good, that spirit of the United Nations, that drives France’s international action. It is the spirit of a Power confident in its principles, united and always ready to act collectively for the common good.
What are our principles? They are those that this Assembly reaffirmed by overwhelming majorities when it condemned Russian aggression against Ukraine
on three previous occasions. Nothing, neither morally nor legally, can ever justify invading one’s neighbour, attempting annexations through unworthy manoeuvres and martyring the population. France defends the simple principles of equality among States and respect for their territorial integrity and sovereignty, principles with which no one can compromise.
France also defends the principle of food security. Despite the confusion and propaganda that some people spread at every turn, who can believe that someone who destroys cereals and grain silos has the slightest interest in global food security, when, in fact, they are its enemy? What we are seeing is the expression of pure brutality, capable of using any weapon, and even hunger, in an attempt to revive an imperialist dream.
In that context, other countries, like France, are taking tangible action by financing the deliveries of the World Food Programme to the most fragile States, facilitating the export of Ukrainian grain through the European Union’s solidarity lanes and funding ambitious programmes around the world to develop local agriculture and to support school canteens.
France also defends the principle of the inviolability of nations’ historic heritage — the legacy of humankind’s cultures. In Mosul and Timbuktu yesterday, in Odesa and Lviv today, everywhere. France supports the efforts of those that defend the historic treasures that hatred threatens to destroy.
Lastly. France clearly supports the principle of combating impunity. Our support for the International Criminal Court can be seen everywhere — in the Sahel in order to try jihadists whom France pushed back yesterday and who again threaten a whole region; and. of course, in Ukraine, where war crimes and crimes against humanity are committed daily against the population.
What is happening in Ukraine concerns us all. If we allow our common principles to be transgressed there, they will be transgressed everywhere. If we allow an aggression to be rewarded, there will be more aggressions, there or elsewhere.
Russia’s war of aggression is also a blow to the most vulnerable countries. It means that we all have a duty of solidarity today. In 2022. France became the fourth actor in that solidarity by joining three friendly Powers — the United States. Japan and Germany. That is the result of a patient investment that I am proud to present.
France stands in solidarity with those threatened by hunger. The appeal made a few days ago to preserve agricultural infrastructure; the massive increase in our food aid to almost €1 billion now. which benefits 67 countries, including this week Nigeria and the Sudan; the hosting of the upcoming meeting of the School Meals Coalition in Paris on 18 and 19 October; and the replenishment consultation of the International Fund for Agricultural Development in December, which aims to bring about a replenishment of $2 billion, are all illustrations of that solidarity.
Our cooperation efforts also seek to enable access for all to the funding needed to fight poverty and to bring about energy transitions, in line with the ambitious United Nations agenda to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The French President therefore took the initiative of organizing the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris on 22 and 23 June, which charted a course to increase public and private funding to address the challenge of international cooperation. The Summit produced immediate positive results, such as the signing of a Just Energy Transition Partnership in Senegal and the agreement reached on Zambia’s debt.
Commitments that France has been working for years to fulfil have also been met. such as the reallocation of $100 billion special drawing rights. The Paris Agenda for Peoples and the Planet, which emerged from the June Summit, sets out clear principles to address both the challenges of poverty and of climate change and biodiversity loss so as to ensure that no country need choose between those goals. I call on all States that have not yet done so to endorse the Paris Agenda.
Our cooperation effort is also that of a country that has surpassed its climate financing promises by more than €1 billion, bringing it now to €7.6 billion as of 2022. It is that of a country that will continue to work tirelessly to protect the planet’s lungs. In June 2025. France will therefore host the United Nations Ocean Conference, which it is co-organizing with Costa Rica, in order to strengthen as far as possible the protection of an essential carbon sink — the oceans. I am counting on the support and the commitment of Member States to protecting forests and building partnerships for their conservation.
Our cooperation effort is that of a country that will always be committed to the promotion and defence of human rights. We will celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris and Geneva this December. It will be an opportunity to pay tribute to those who fight to defend rights and freedoms and to safeguard human dignity. Those are rights to which we all aspire across the globe. I am thinking of women’s rights, particularly in Afghanistan, where women are repressed for being who they are by a Taliban regime that has tragically made a policy of segregation and violence against women a central tenet of its political identity.
Our solidarity is also with those who fight for others, sometimes risking their lives. I am thinking of the United Nations peacekeepers, as well as the 116 humanitarian workers who were killed and those who were injured or kidnapped in 2022. We must protect them better, and France will remain fully engaged at their side, as we did this week with our humanitarian partners here at the United Nations.
Based on those principles. France will always be ready to carry out collective action to serve the common good.
In terms of the climate, today we can see how a lack of ambition can result in disasters. Extreme weather events, fires and flooding have marked this year, all around the world, and resulted in tens of thousands of victims. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the summary produced ahead of the twenty-eighth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change should alarm us. We cannot look away. On the contrary, we must take action fast and collectively to tackle those common challenges, which no nation on this planet can escape. It is urgent, but possible.
To do that, we have a tested method, which helped us to achieve results in the past. It is that of the Montreal Protocol, which enabled humankind to resolve the ozone layer problem. It is the method that we used to together reach the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015. It is also that method that should enable the international legally binding instrument on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction to enter into force as soon as possible to protect marine areas; and it is the method that will help us to fulfil the ambitious aims of the Kunming-Montreal agreement on biodiversity and adopt — we hope, as it is necessary — a legally binding agreement to eliminate plastic pollution.
That method, which is the only viable way to go beyond awareness-raising and act with determination, commitment and responsibility, is multilateralism. Given the climate destruction, the demolition of our natural environment and the widespread loss of our biodiversity. Member States can count on France to continue to take the initiative.
The multilateral method is also the one that enables us to resolve the increasing number of international crises. In Nagorno-Karabakh, the international community must ensure that a population subjected to nine months of a relentless blockade and a recent campaign of bombing and destruction, at last has its rights and security guaranteed. A diktat imposed on a besieged civilian population cannot be a solution, while the threats made against Armenia itself and the attacks against its territory that have already been observed must cease.
In Africa, we believe in African solutions to African crises, and we support the African regional organizations whenever they ask for support from their partners. We are doing that in the Niger, where France supports the Economic Community of West African States in its efforts to restore constitutional order, undermined by force as the democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum faces an attempted coup d’etat.
In the Sudan, a murderous war has been raging for more than five months. Civilians are the primary victims of an atrocious conflict. It is therefore the international community’s duty to continue to work tirelessly to find solutions to achieve peace. We once again ask the warring parties to cease the fighting and spare civilians, allow a humanitarian truce and bring about an inclusive political solution.
Neither can we become accustomed to the conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has for so long been driven by the same motivations and hurt the same people. There, too. France is providing support to regional conflict resolution mechanisms to facilitate a negotiated, peaceful solution. France is. and will remain, a reliable, consistent ally to African regional organizations in their fight for peace, development, democracy and the security of the continent.
In a changing Middle East. France is also playing its part, tirelessly supporting dialogue and cooperation. We will continue to participate, at the invitation of our Iraqi partner, in the so-called Baghdad process, an unprecedented format of dialogue among all countries of the region, which will soon meet again to work this time on tangible projects to respond to the clear need for cooperation among such countries.
Between Israelis and Palestinians, we will also continue our efforts for peace that guarantees both peoples a State and secure and recognized borders based on the 1967 lines, with Jerusalem as the capital. The two-State solution is the only path to just and lasting peace.
In a changing environment, the United Nations must also adapt. France supports the Secretary-General’s ambitious reform agenda and actively contributes to the preparations ahead of the 2024 Summit of the Future. We must also regain the momentum for Security Council reform. I am of course thinking of the expansion of the Council, in which we have long supported greater African representation, including among the permanent members, and the candidacy for the Group of Four. I am also thinking of the framework for the right to veto in the event of mass atrocities, which paves the way for the renewed effectiveness of the Security Council.
True to its tradition. France will be present so that we. together, as our United Nations, can tackle global challenges, threats to international peace and security and attacks on our shared principles. To do that, the Secretary-General. Antonio Guterres, can count on the unwavering support of France. Now is the time to act. together, for the good of all.