Verbatim speech of the President of the Republic at the 73rd General Assembly of the United Nations

MIL OSI Translation. Government of the Republic of France statements from English to French – Published September 26, 2018

Section: International, development and francophonie

ONLY THE PRONOUNCED FAITH.

New York, Tuesday, September 25, 2018

SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC

73rd GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Mr. President of the United Nations General Assembly,

Mr. Secretary General,

Ladies and Gentlemen, Heads of State and Government,

Ladies and gentlemen,

All of us here are the heirs of a great hope, that of preserving future generations from the scourge of war, of building an international order based on the right and respect for the word given, of advancing humanity towards an economic, social, moral progress in an ever more secure freedom.

And we have had results: human rights have spread, trade and prosperity have grown, poverty has declined. This is our achievement of the last decades.

However, we must look lucidly at the moment we are going through. Today we are experiencing a deep crisis in the liberal Westphalian international order that we have experienced. First, because it failed partly to regulate itself. Its economic, financial, environmental and climatic excesses have not found an answer yet to the height to date.

Secondly, because our collective capacity to respond to crises is still too often hindered by divisions of the Security Council. Our organization is too often reduced to deploring the rights violations it has sworn to guarantee. 70 years after the adoption in Paris of the Declaration of Human Rights, a cultural, historical and religious relativism is now challenging the foundations of their universality.

Born of hope, the United Nations can become, like the League of Nations that preceded it, the symbol of impotence. And no one needs to look for those responsible for this disintegration, they are here in this assembly. They are speaking today. The leaders are the leaders we are.

From this observation, three major paths appear in the background before us. The first is to think that this is a moment, a parenthesis in history before returning to normal. I do not believe it. I do not believe it because we are going through a crisis of efficiency and of principle of our contemporary world order which will not be able to find again its bearings and its operation of before. The moment we are living is not a parenthesis: it expresses our own past inadequacies.

The second way is that of the law of the strongest. It is tempting for everyone to follow his own law. This path, I affirm it here, that of unilateralism, it leads us directly to withdrawal and to the conflict, to the generalized confrontation of all against all, to the detriment of everyone, even of the term who believes himself the strongest. . The responsibility for peace does not delegate, does not refuse, does not pre-empt, it is exercised collectively. The law of the strongest protects no people against any threat, be it chemical or nuclear.

What will really solve the situation in Iran and what has already begun to stabilize it? The law of the strongest, the pressure of one? No ! We know that Iran was on the military nuclear path, but what stopped it? The Vienna Agreement of 2015. We must today, as I said a year ago, not exacerbate regional tensions, but propose a broader agenda to address all the nuclear, ballistic, regional concerns caused by Iranian policies, but in dialogue and multilateralism. Without naivety or complacency, but without postures which, in the long term, would not fail to be sterile.

What will solve the problem of trade imbalances and all their consequences for our societies? Common rules adapted to the reality of today and ensuring fair, equal and, in no way, a bilateral treatment of all our trade disputes or new protectionism.

What will resolve the crisis between Israel and Palestine? No unilateral initiatives, neither ignoring the legitimate rights of Palestinians to achieve lasting peace, nor underestimating the legitimate right of Israelis to their security. There is no credible alternative to the two-state solution living side by side in peace and security with Jerusalem as its capital. Israel knows that France has an unshakable friendship for her, and it is in the name of this friendship that I call on it to put an end rapidly to the policy of fait accompli which threatens the very possibility of reaching a peace agreement. To continue in this way would be a mistake.

On this issue, I am ready and we must be ready to get out of dogmas, historical positions, to take new initiatives, but on condition that this triggers positive changes on the ground. The law of the strongest here will only reinforce frustrations and violence.

As you have understood, in the face of contemporary imbalances, I do not believe in the law of the strongest, even though it would dress in a form of legitimacy where it has in fact lost all kind of legality.

I believe in a third way ahead of us, probably the most difficult, probably the most demanding, which requires us to forge together a new model, to find together a new global balance. After a form of hyperpower model, for several years we have been witnessing a new instability of the world marked by the return of multiple powers.

The new balance that we must create must be based on new forms of regional and international co-operation and will, in my opinion, be structured around three principles: the first is respect for sovereignty, the very foundation of our charter; the second is the strengthening of our regional cooperation; and the third is the contribution of stronger international guarantees. And it is this method, it is around these three principles that we must take care to regulate contemporary crisis situations.

Thus, in Syria, we continue the fight against Islamist terrorism. The military commitments of some countries have allowed the regime to recover at the price of crimes that officials will one day account. The Syrian people have tragically paid the price, and there will be no winners in a Syria in ruins. What is needed now is to win peace under the auspices of the United Nations. It is not up to us to decide for the Syrian people, but to build the ways and means of this method that I have just defined and thus to build a solution, not only by the Astana guaranteeing States, but also by other regional states and the international community through the Small Group, to do so under the coordination of the United Nations and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, in order to create, on the one hand, the humanitarian crisis, and on the other to build a sustainable inclusive political solution through constitutional reform and the organization of free elections.

This is true respect for Syrian sovereignty! It is neither a substitute for the Syrian people to decide who should be their leader nor accept to cover all the crimes by accepting that this leader stays until the end of time considering that we have more principles and, at background, more rights.

In Libya, here too, it is this new method that should allow us to bring about a lasting solution. The current status quo allows militias, traffickers to gain ground, destabilizing the entire region. We will not give the Libyans the means to get out of it if we continue to divide, if Libya becomes the ground, as it still is too often, of confrontations of foreign influences.

In Paris, the Libyans made the commitment to organize quickly elections which will reunify the institutions of the State. These commitments must be held under the auspices of the United Nations, with close cooperation of the African Union.

Yesterday, an important step has been taken and I want to greet it, it is the interest of the Libyans as well as their neighbors, Europeans and the international community that must be united around these objectives to advance as well.

We are, together, strong in the face of terrorism when States can count on their own forces to ensure their security and when this security also knows how to articulate itself on regional and international solutions according to the principle that I have just enacted.

This is the decision taken by the Sahel states acting together within the G5 Force. This is the meaning of the process launched by the African Union to better take responsibility for its responsibilities through African peace operations. This is the meaning of the initiatives taken in the Lake Chad region, also accompanied by Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and supported by the African Union.

That is why we must support this initiative of the African Union, push for a better articulation between the African Union and the United Nations. I hope that by the end of the year, a resolution can be taken in this direction.

We are strong in the face of terrorism when we know how to take together our responsibilities to fight against all forms of its financing, when we are able, as we do in the Alliance for the Sahel, to act together for the development, the agriculture, education, against the roots of despair that allowed terrorists to capture souls.

$ 7.5 billion is already committed to 500 projects defined jointly with all concerned States and partners of the Alliance for the Sahel. These are the first results that we must consolidate.

And you see it on each of these crises, the answer was not to leave states alone, was not to substitute for them or to say from here what was the right or the solution, but to know how to articulate conscientiously the principle of sovereignty of peoples, regional cooperation and a real commitment of the international community. It is around this triptych that contemporary solutions are built.

Only collective action preserves the sovereignty and equality of the peoples who gave us mandate. It is this same requirement that we must address to the demographic, climate and digital challenges that are before us and that none of us will be able to face alone.

Faced with the great migratory challenge, I do not believe in unconditional openness, they only provoke anxiety and increase intolerance. I do not believe more in the false speeches of those who claim, for example, in Europe as elsewhere, that they will be stronger sheltered behind a closing of the borders, it is not true.

The only effective way to manage the migratory flows affecting all our continents in an organized and controlled way is to create the conditions for international mobility chosen and not suffered, to work together, countries of origin, transit, destination, to dismantle the trafficking networks that are the worst scourge of this situation and to protect our borders in a respectful manner while ensuring respect for our international law and especially the unconditional protection of those entitled to asylum. This is what we decided to do together in the UN pact that will be adopted in Marrakech in December and that I support.

Faced with climate disruptions, there either, there are no stowaways or easy solution. Even those who challenge reality suffer the consequences like all others. Extreme weather events are today everyday. And by weakening collective action, some are just exposing themselves more.

Faced with the great digital transformation, our duty is also to hold together to build the contemporary rules that will reconcile the development of artificial intelligence and our ethical rules, to support the digital transformation of our societies.

As you can see, my dear friends, I deeply believe in the sovereignty of the peoples, which today is present, strong, is a demand of all our peoples on the international scene and at the same time, in a reinforced cooperation with the forms and renewed legitimacy of international engagement in this context. The great fight of our elders has been that of peace, and it always falls to us. We will win it in the 21st century only by restoring a strong multilateralism, able to resolve its conflicts in a pragmatic way, but also and more broadly to tackle the causes of these disruptions.

To be honest, I do not believe in a great globalized people. In no way, it's irenic, it does not exist. But I believe in universal values ​​and on this point we must not give in, it is not the same thing! I believe in the non-negotiable defense of our values, human rights, the dignity of individuals, equality between the sexes. I believe in our capacity to build respectful balances of people and cultures by negotiating nothing of this universality, that's the reality! And I will not leave the principle of sovereignty of the peoples in the hand of the nationalists or of all those who today advocate in the international community the withdrawal, who want to use the sovereignty of the peoples to attack the universalism of our values , the strength of it and what holds us together here in this room!

We all here, even those who profess to criticize it, benefited from the structuring of the international order that accompanied globalization. Today, we must tackle the root causes of our imbalances, we must face together the weaknesses of our international order and, beyond the crises I have just mentioned, look at the deep inequalities that have settled.

For me today is the heart of our problem, what is reviving nationalism, doubt about our assembly? What causes crises everywhere? It is these profound inequalities that we have not been able to solve.

Ten years ago, when the international financial crisis hit, we took emergency measures but we did not solve the deepest problem, we did not stop this movement of hyper-concentration of wealth. on our planet and we have not really responded to all those left out of globalization. All those who were kept out of it, and who thus harbored frustrations because of the humiliations they suffered, fed a desperation that we are now paying the price collectively.

We owe an answer to all these fellow citizens. My friends must respond to the 265 million children who do not have access to school, more than half of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa, to girls to whom less than 40 per cent of countries have equitable access to school. education.

We owe an answer to the 700 million children who live in the regions most exposed to the consequences of climate change, victims of floods, droughts, rising water levels, scarcity of resources.

We owe an answer to the 200 million women who do not have access to contraception, the over one billion who are not protected by law if they come to suffer violence in their homes. To all women whose pay gap with men is 23% in the world on average, up to 40% in rural areas. We owe an answer to the 783 million people who live below the poverty line, those who suffer from hunger or chronic malnutrition, and those who do not have access to basic care.

We owe an answer to the aspirations of the most important young people in history, our own, nearly two billion people who are now between 10 and 24 years old and 90% of whom live in a country in development.

We owe an answer to all who look to us because their destiny depends on whether or not we are able to do this together in this assembly. And those who forget that we owe an answer to all those are wrong because they prepare the crises of tomorrow, the day after tomorrow because they will leave their successors, because we will then leave our children in a good situation. worse than ours right now.

We have made progress in reducing inequalities between our countries, and we have set the framework for it with the 2030 Agenda for Development, but this fight is not behind us, it is far from over. Per capita wealth is 50 times higher in OECD countries than it is in low-income countries. Do we think that in the long run we can build stability, balances with such a situation? No, we must act!

For this reason, as I announced here last year, I decided to increase France's official development assistance by 1 billion euros by 2019. Our humanitarian funding will increase as for them 40%.

But that is also why the fight against inequalities will be the priority of the French presidency of the G7 summit in 2019. Indeed, France will have after Canada, which I want to welcome here the leadership, the next presidency of the G7 , which I wish to review the format in depth to better associate several other powers and work on new forms of coordination.

It was at the United Nations that I wanted to say first that this agenda of inequality will be at the heart of the next G7. It is also in front of you that I pledge to come and report on the results of the G7 Biarritz next September, because the time when a club of rich countries could define alone the balances of the world has long since passed. Because the destiny of each of the countries that compose it is inseparable from that of all the members of this assembly.

Yes, today we must tackle contemporary inequalities because they are at the root of this evil that I denounced at the beginning of my speech. We must tackle the inequalities of destiny. They are moral aberrations as much as an unsustainable reality. It is not acceptable not to have the same opportunities depending on the country where you were born, not being able to go to some countries in school because you are a woman, not having access to certain elementary care.

We made the commitment made here last year with the President of Senegal, the Global Partnership for Education's Financing Conference in February in Dakar raised $ 2.5 billion to increase access to education in the world. It's a historical amount. France has multiplied by 10 its contribution. The mobilization of the G7 already under Canadian presidency will have to go further.

We are at a key moment on this subject, one where we will be able or not to take the measure of the challenge that is launched to us. There are 620 million more children to enroll in the world by 2030, including 444 million Africans. Are we going to give ourselves the means? Will we give them the means to all to have robust bases allowing them to be actors of their life, of a fraternal life in the world of tomorrow? If we do not do it, what world are we preparing for?

That's why I've engaged France so much in this fight, that's why I insist so much on the training of teachers, vocational education and gender equality in terms of education. That's why I'm calling you all to this great momentum for education. Education and health will be not only the pillars of our 21st century societies, but also the building blocks of our economies.

We must also fight fervently against gender inequalities. In France, I have made equality between women and men the great cause of my five-year term, and I call here to make a great world cause for you. Women and girls are the first to be affected by poverty, conflict and the consequences of global warming. They are the first victims of sexist and sexual violence that prevents them too often from moving freely, from working, from disposing of their bodies according to their choice.

Our responsibility in the 21st century is to put an end to this violence, from street harassment to feminicide. It is time for our world to stop making women victims and finally build them the place they deserve, that of being also leaders! We must everywhere guarantee them access to education, health, employment, economic and political decision-making, and fight against all forms of violence against them.

France will thus propose to governments wishing to advance with us to create a coalition for the adoption of new laws for equality between women and men. 50% of our development aid will be devoted to projects to reduce gender inequalities.

We must also revive the mobilization against inequalities in health at the international level. In 2019 we will host in Lyon the replenishment conference of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. We will resume the initiative on the fight against fake medicines and intensify our action against major pandemics. I call everyone here to mobilize.

We must finally fight, with the sense of urgency pegged to the body, against environmental inequalities. It is not acceptable that 45% of greenhouse gas emissions are produced by 10% of the richest inhabitants of the planet. It is not effective, as is the case for solar, that the countries with the greatest potential and the greatest needs are the ones with the least access to appropriate technologies.

It is not sustainable that an additional 100 million people will be condemned by extreme poverty by 2030 if we fail to meet our commitments to fight global warming. Here too, it is a fight that must bring us together.

There are countries here that suffer more than others and we owe them solidarity. But we will all be accountable for the disasters that are multiplying before our peoples and our own children.

The announced decomposition of the Paris Agreement was thwarted, because we were able to remain united, despite the US decision to withdraw. This force must continue to carry us to ward off all fatalism.

We are told that solutions exist, but that funding is not there. So let's go get them, innovate. This is what we did last year in Paris, December 12, with many of you, at the One Planet Summit, with concrete commitments and first results. This is what we did at the beginning of the year in Delhi with the International Solar Alliance. This is what we will do again tomorrow in New York, with the second edition of the One Planet Summit.

We are told that it is already too late, that we will not keep the objectives. So let's speed up, adopt together the rules of application of the Paris Agreement, at COP 24 in December. Let's implement the HFC protocol that could bring the world's average temperature down by one degree by 2050. Let us aim to conclude in 2020 an ambitious Global Compact project for the environment, to make the Beijing COP on Biodiversity and the IUCN World Congress in France a milestone in 2020.

Let us be clear and let us all be clear, concrete and consistent. It's urgent. So, let us comply with the commitments we have made. No longer sign trade deals with powers that do not comply with the Paris Agreement. Let our trade commitments integrate our environmental and social constraints. Mobilize sovereign funds and financiers more strongly in this strategy of a low-carbon policy.

France will continue to exercise, with all those who want it, the world leadership of this fight. We will work on the G7 so that the commitments made at COP 21 are revised upwards and if one of the members does not want to move forward, we will move forward, looking for new coalitions, new formats. Because the G7's vocation is to remain a united group of countries committed to democracy. But today it must also contribute to the creation of new coalitions that make it possible to advance and recompose the global collective system.

So, let's build new forms of cooperation for, on these fundamental topics, to move forward, to decide.

Only together can we effectively fight against all the inequalities that have fractured our societies. Mistrust in our societies, temptations to fall back on this. They feed on all the inequalities we have allowed ourselves to create and our collective inability to respond effectively.

However, none of us will be able to fight effectively against the inequalities that I have just denounced, if it acts alone. Otherwise, there will be basically only two solutions. The first would be to always line down, to join a standard that we know, this is what we have done for decades. There is a trade war, so let us lower the rights of the workers, lower the taxes ever further, feed the inequalities to try to respond to our trade difficulties. This leads to what? To the reinforcement of the inequalities in our societies and to this break that we are living.

The other answer would be to say what does not work, these are the rules. So let us fall back on ourselves. Isolationism, protectionism. But that only leads to one thing, increasing tensions. This does not answer the deep inequalities.

On the contrary, I propose that we put in place a collective mechanism to work together on what we are doing in each of our countries to reduce inequalities.

To evaluate, but also to better align our actions, disseminate good practices. I propose that the international institutions, the United Nations, but of course the OECD, support us in setting up this mechanism on which the G7 will have to drive.

To win against inequalities, we must change our method and scale. First, to review our rules on trade and social matters, we must, rather than continue protectionism, work together to thoroughly review the rules of the WTO. We must restore the WTO's capacity to resolve conflicts, to lay down rules to deal with unfair commercial practices, the non-respect of intellectual property, the forced technology transfers that no longer make it possible to fight on a level playing field.

Starting this year, the G20 in Argentina should allow us to have a credible road map to rebuild the WTO.

This is also what we will have to do at the social level, next year, at the centenary of the International Labor Organization.

Secondly, we must also change the modus operandi of our action, to bring into the field of our collective action the great absentees of this Hall and of our General Assembly, the large non-State actors who contribute to change the world, but who do not participate not enough to eliminate the inequalities that these transformations entail. I think of the major players in the digital world, in terms of taxation as well as responsibility in the fight against the manipulation of information.

On all our great challenges, we must have, here again, a different functioning of our collective action and include a dialogue with these new private actors and these giants of the Internet.

Thirdly, we must make Africa its place, so that its role is central to the recomposition of the international system. It is not only on this continent that we will win or collectively lose our great battle against inequality. It is with this continent.

For it is today in Africa that we find the most fervent defenders of multilateralism, of regional integration. Because our African partners have understood that together we will be able to meet our common challenges. And it is also to this new alliance with Africa that the French presidency of the G7 will tackle.

As you can see, I believe very deeply that in the face of these fractures, of these challenges of the contemporary world order, we can build a new grammar of action and at the same time we must tackle the root causes of contemporary inequalities.

And it is the responsibility of France and all of its European partners, of the European Union to be at the forefront of this fight, to build this new contemporary humanism that must not give way to attempts to retreat and nothing to naivety and, at the same time, to build as mediating powers these new rules of the international order.

Ladies and gentlemen, as our collective system fractures, I must say that we have never needed it so much.

That is why we will support the agencies working on a project of peace and humanity: UNESCO, the very conscience of the United Nations, the Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court, UNRWA for which we will increase our contribution because I recall it here, it is simply to allow hundreds of thousands of children to go to school. Nothing less, nothing more.

We will defend the enlargement of the Security Council in the two categories of its members so that its composition reflects the contemporary balances and that it is strengthened as a place of the consultation and not of the obstruction.

We will ensure that by the end of the year in this General Assembly, two-thirds of its members can support the veto in case of mass atrocity.

We will defend international humanitarian law by supporting personnel who take all the risks to help civilians on the ground by negotiating humanitarian access one by one in all theaters.

We will recall on the 70th anniversary of the 1948 Declaration that human rights are not a cultural fact, revocable values ​​or options, but a body of law enshrined in international treaties to which members of this assembly have freely consented . We will recall that their universality is not contrary to the sovereignty of peoples but that it is the only possible condition for the preservation and exercise of their rights.

France will be there so that the world does not forget that the din of nationalism always leads to the abyss, that the democracies are weak if they lack courage in the defense of their principles and that the accumulated resentments, backed up by a system fragile international community, can lead twice in the space of a human life to the global outburst of violence. I’m talking about our own experience.

In a few weeks, November 11, 2018, the Peace Forum in Paris will be the opportunity for a burst of intelligence and courage to find what is holding us here together. It must be an opportunity to renew and rejuvenate, united by the tragedies of the twentieth century, our oath to preserve future generations from the scourge of war. I want together with our counterparts, we take together the new responsibilities to chart the course of this Forum for concrete actions in the service of peace.

I know, my dear friends, that many people can be tired of multilateralism. I know that in a world where information is clashing and where we are somehow, uninhibited, into a society of entertainment, where to say the worst things is to be fashionable, to make the news, that denouncing the consequences of which one has cherished the causes can create successes of platform, I know that to defend the cooperation and the multilateralism can not be fashionable any more.

So, let’s not be fashionable because we owe it to those who allowed us to sit there. Because never forget that the genocides that made you here today, they were fed by the speeches that we get used to, because they were fed by the stage successes that we applaud, because Today, we are in the process of seeing this international law disintegrated, all the forms of cooperation as if nothing was out of fear, out of complicity, because that’s good!

No, I do not want to do it because I come from a country that has made these Declarations that make us there, because I come from a country that stands, that made a lot of mistakes, many bad things, but who knew how to keep at each moment of his History and International History a form of universal! It’s today, it’s now!

So, do not get used to it, do not accept all these forms of unilateralism! Every day, these torn pages, these betrayals to our History, I do not get used to it!

So I tell you very clearly, the century that is opening is watching us and our children are waiting for us! Let’s settle crises! Let us work together to fight against all these inequalities but do it at the height of man and with the requirement of our principles, our stories, with our universalism pegged to the body!

In any case, it will be my commitment before you and for that, I count on you.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is a translation. Please accept our apologies should the grammar and / or sentence structure not be perfect.