YouSaid · the spoken record

Carlos Alvarado Quesada

lines on the record

56

first

2019-09-24

most recent

2021-09-24

sittings or episodes

3

sources

un-general-debate

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “Despair, frustration, resentment and the lack of a sense of belonging create a breeding ground for regimes that trample on people’s rights and wage war in the name of perverse and spurious ideals. In an era of profound transformation that is forcing us to rethink the very foundations of our social contract, a simplistic discourse of “isms” is echoing around and penetrating societies from within, gathering popular support in democratic and legal systems, and within our democracies we have been unable to provide similarly agile and concrete responses to inequality and a lack of opportunity. We must also anticipate history with strength and courage, so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past.”

   2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)

2. “Rather than waiting, we should take the initiative to mobilize joint projects for peace and progress for humankind as a road to building a better shared future for all through multilateralism. The freedom of the human spirit compels us to act. We should not be condemned merely to be reactive to potential painful events that might occur or that we know could occur in the future. It is our responsibility today to anticipate the direction that history will take and to take advantage of opportunities, without allowing a new economic, environmental or conflict crisis to be the new lever that compels us to adopt the necessary changes. Contemporary thinkers such as Rob Riemen, Yuval Noah Harari, Joseph Stiglitz and others agree that today we are seeing parallels with the world of the 1930s.”

   2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)

3. “Our continent’s ideas also showed themselves ahead of their times with the adoption of the American Convention on Human Rights, known as the San Jose Pact, and with the creation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Would it have been possible to advance the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the creation of the United Nations, the implementation of the Marshall Plan, the Alliance for Progress, decolonization or the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as proactive steps towards building a better world? Or was it inevitable that they were responses, aimed at preventing new wars and other global threats? Might it have been possible to avoid so much pain and loss? Ideas can be ahead of their time.”

   2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)

4. “As early as the second half of the nineteenth century we announced that education for children would be free and compulsory, and in 1941 we established the foundations of a universal social-security system. Seventy years ago we abolished our army and declared that we would be at peace with the world forever. At the time, it was said that it would be impossible for a country to survive without an army, and yet here I am, 70 years later, proof to the contrary. In 1981 we opened the University for Peace to the world. All of that was possible only in a multilateral world that fights for peace, international law and human rights.”

   2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)

5. “The idea did not prosper at the time, much less with the outbreak of the Second World War, which led to the events we are all familiar with that resulted in the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the creation of this formidable Organization that is the United Nations, where I have the honour to speak today. Similarly, in 1960 some other visionary leaders in Central America began the process of creating the Central American Common Market, the oldest integration effort on the continent, which helped to jointly drive the development of Central America with a view to improving its inhabitants’ living conditions. The leaders who preceded me in Costa Rica were also ahead of their times.”

   2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)

6. “In Germany, there was once a mayor of Cologne — at 41, he was a young leader for his times — who held the view that peace in Europe depended on the relations between Germany and France. He said that could be achieved only by developing strong economic and political ties that would unite the interests of both nations. Today that proposition would surprise no one, but what is different about it was that Konrad Adenauer, that young mayor, was advocating it from his mayor’s office about 100 years ago, in the 1920s, as he sought better relations between the countries of the Rhine basin.”

   2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)