Let me first congratulate the President on his election to lead the General Assembly at its seventy-eighth session. It is truly a great honour to be addressing the general debate of the Assembly for the first time in my capacity as the President of Slovenia, as this institution is facing the most challenging of times — times that we have not seen since the United Nations was first established. I will return to that point again later.
We live in a world in which various actors, including private companies and individuals, affect international relations at every level and across sovereign boundaries. It is a world that has changed demographically and technologically. It is a world in which human dignity is still not guaranteed for all and is increasingly challenged for the most marginalized and vulnerable people. It is a world with a set of normative commitments, including legally binding treaties, that are not being implemented. It is a world of many wars, deadly conflicts and aggressions against States, and of the suffering of many civilians, who fear for their lives or are affected by the socioeconomic destruction caused by conflict. It is a world that has not universally recognized the seriousness of the climate change unfolding before our eyes. It is a world that lacks global solidarity for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals that we have all committed to. It is a world that needs the United Nations, with a reformed, representative Security Council that will be able to respond effectively, adequately and fairly to all the challenges I have mentioned.
We should tackle those challenges together as one. If we continue to prioritize national interests, private interests or the particular interests of individual actors and leave the resolution of global problems on the sidelines, we will extinguish ourselves as a civilization. In that context. I would like to briefly touch on four issues that call for the attention of all of us and require that we all adopt and implement appropriate measures. They are climate change. Security Council reform, the pitfalls of the digital age and. of course, gender equality.
With regard to climate change, it may sound like a cliche to say that we need to abandon the “business as usual” mentality. But it is not a cliche. Business as usual is not working. It is failing us all. Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time. The catastrophic floods that hit Slovenia in August were just one more event among the many around the world that prove the point. I hope that we will be able to deal with the flooding’s consequences. But let us think of countries that have less capacity to do so. such as small island developing States. They are frequent victims of catastrophic natural disasters, but their recovery costs are disproportionately high.
Everyone should invest in an environmentally sustainable world, but I want to be clear — not everyone equally. Global solidarity is a matter of climate justice. Intergovernmental solidarity, with richer States contributing more than the poorer ones and with the richest private companies also contributing their fair share, must be guided by the understanding that climate change is a result of human activities, past and present. I am therefore pleased to announce that Slovenia plans to increase its contribution to the Green Climate Fund by 50 per cent. Addressing the growing financing gap between the needs of developing countries and the available financial resources is essential to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However. I am very concerned that the current geopolitical polarization is hindering collaborative climate action. I only wish that in the circumstances scientists were listened to more. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, simply keeping our promises would already be a step in the right direction. Sustainable development must become our joint and purposeful goal and the principle guiding everyone’s behaviour. We must integrate climate action, as well as the related question of water and food security, into conflict prevention and resolution and sustainable peace-building.
Slovenia continues to be actively involved in ensuring climate and environmental justice, including the right to a clean and healthy environment, and in securing equitable access to safe drinking water and sanitation for all. During the United Nations 2023 Water Conference. I emphasized that water is life, water is existence and water is peace. It is for that reason that I want to take this opportunity to repeat our call for the establishment of a United Nations special envoy for water, which would be an important step towards ensuring more coherent water efforts both inside and outside the United Nations.
On 6 June. Slovenia was elected as a non-permanent member of the Security Council for the 2024-2025 term. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all members for their confidence in electing my country to serve on the Council. We will take on that task as a great honour, with profound humility and a sense of shared responsibility. The work we will do in our term will be based on the numerous conversations and exchanges that we had with Member States during our campaign.
With regard to the Security Council. I cannot avoid the discussions on its reform, which have been going on for decades. I truly hope that we will soon see a light at the end of the tunnel. Slovenia has always been among the Member States claiming that a change in the composition of the Council’s permanent and non-permanent membership is long overdue. The current distribution of its seats is neither fair nor representative. Furthermore. Slovenia belongs to the majority of Member States that are deeply concerned about the unrestrained use of the power of the veto, which is causing us to lose faith in the Council, and has also resulted in its failing to act when action is required.
In Europe, we view Ukraine as a case in point. Even some of the Council’s permanent members have suggested that the five permanent members of the Security Council (P5) should refrain from using the veto, at least in cases of mass atrocities. We are all seeing that very valid suggestion ignored. In that regard, we commend Liechtenstein’s recent introduction, through resolution 76/262. of the veto initiative as an important invitation to the P5 to reflect thoroughly on a situation before resorting to a veto. At the same time, it should be recalled that the Charter of the United Nations itself gives the P5 an opportunity to express their displeasure with decision-making but still act responsibly. They may not like a draft resolution, but they can choose to abstain in the voting and let the United Nations pursue its main goal without interruption — that of maintaining peace and security for all. not merely a few. and certainly not just one.
When we lose trust, we attack the very foundations of organized society in our international community. I am afraid that in our digital age. part of the problem of losing trust lies with science and technology. Inventions are meant to advance humankind. Social media was not invented to disconnect us. but too often it does exactly that. Artificial intelligence can be useful, but it can also be dangerous. In that regard. I applaud the Secretary- General’s resolve to form a high-level advisory body on artificial intelligence. We need to find a way to govern the development of new technologies, including artificial intelligence, in a way that does not impede economic, development, social and research opportunities and does not put us at risk. The answer should be a human-centric and human rights-based approach to the full life cycle of technologies, encompassing their design, development and application as well as their decline. The Global Digital Compact should be centred on that notion. Things can be done, but we will need all actors, including private companies, to be on board with an honest and meaningful commitment.
Ensuring that human rights are the foundation of an open, safe digital future will not be an easy task. In that regard. I am looking at a key menace of our time — disinformation. Unfortunately, our time is once again one of competing narratives, except that now the threat they pose to humankind is much more complex. We are in an era of snack news, an attention economy, the fabrication of facts and increasing disagreements about facts precisely because we no longer trust any narrative. We may have freedom of information, but we are not protected against false information, manipulation and deceit. The Secretary-General was on point when he referred to the proliferation of hate and lies in the digital space as grave global harm. Big tech companies should take more systematic responsibility for the content they host and moderate. They should better protect users from hate speech, disinformation and other harmful online content. What is unacceptable offline should not be acceptable online.
I am about to say a few words on a subject so important that I have saved it for the last part of my address — gender equality. This year we are celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It saddens me that today we are still facing the fact that half of the world’s population, women and girls, experience inequality, exclusion and even brutal violence. Their societal marginalization, often coupled with poverty and a lack of opportunities for receiving quality education, and with exclusion from labour markets and decision-making processes, is not only unjust but also results in a monumental waste of potential for our societies.
To ensure dignity for everyone, including women and girls, we all must pursue that goal, whether in the West. East. North or South, or anywhere in between. We should start at home, and in our United Nations home.
In that regard. I would like to recall an astounding detail that illustrates the need to take Sustainable Development Goal 5 very seriously. It is that it will take 140 years to achieve the equal representation of women in leadership positions in the workplace. I think that is simply unacceptable, and the Secretary-General agrees. The achievement of women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in political and public life is part of his New Agenda for Peace. That is why I am very much in favour of initiatives to achieve that objective, including within the framework of the United Nations. On that particular point. I am thinking of the initiative from the Group of Women Leaders Voices for Change and Inclusion aimed at alternating the gender of the presidency of the General Assembly. The President here leads an Assembly of the world’s most important global institution. We are all painfully aware that so far only four Presidents of the General Assembly have been women — four in its entire history — while 74 have been men. We should live up to our own declarations on gender equality and make them a reality in the work of the General Assembly as well. That would be a vivid and symbolic way of demonstrating our joint commitment.
As I leave this rostrum. I would like to reaffirm the need for multilateralism. It needs to be a different type of multilateralism, one that is effective and inclusive, making the United Nations an actor and a forum fully fit for the future. The most pressing challenges today — and I have elaborated on some of them — cannot be addressed by individual States, whatever their size or power. This must be a collective effort, or our children and grandchildren will be affected far more deeply than the generation of leaders gathered here. We must work for a new global compact that needs to be principled, to rise above individual interests and be based on global solidarity. It needs to prioritize the protection of nature and human dignity, and it also needs to have a long horizon. Slovenia is fully committed to contributing to the Pact for the Future, and we look forward to actively engaging in the upcoming Summit of the Future next year. We must be ambitious, even if we do not agree on solutions to all the emerging challenges. We need to use our power and resources to put all our collective efforts into action in order to solve them. Better one by one than none.