YouSaid · the spoken record

Emmanuel Macron

lines on the record: 205
first: 2017-09-24
most recent: 2022-09-24
sittings or episodes: 5
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

“The Fund was then established, with the support of the Group of Eight at the time, and 32 million lives have been saved as a result. I insist that the eradication of major pandemics is within the reach of our action. We can save 16 million lives in the coming years. We must simply recognize that no one can understand any longer how, for reasons of finance and inequality, it is impossible today to access treatments to prevent or cure such diseases or to slow their resurgence. That is why we need $14 billion in Lyon. We have three weeks, and we will put all our energy into making sure that a new global fund meets our ambition. Lastly, the issue of climate is also a fight against inequalities and one of the subjects on which the courage of responsibility must be exemplified.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“On the three principles of action — namely, emancipate, protect and ensure real equality — we will act in view of the Generation Equality Forum, to be held in Paris in July 2020, 25 years after the Beijing Declaration, which marked the history of our Organization. There is no turning back now. We must move forward into a new era. We must also fight that battle and have the courage to assume responsibility for our health. Here too, we have seen even today too many setbacks and difficulty of access to treatment in some regions, despite our efforts. The sixth replenishment conference of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will be held on 10 October in Lyon, France. From this rostrum in 2002, Kofi Annan called for the creation of a global fund to fight inequalities in the face of the possibility of curing deadly diseases.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“We must do even more than we have done before, because we are seeing in numerous States a decline in equality between women and men and a questioning of women’s rights to control their bodies and the achievements of past decades. We must act because wherever inequality between women and men takes root, it leads to a decline in civilization, a rise in obscurantism, a growth in terrorism and a downturn in education. It also leads to diminished growth, because it means depriving each of those countries of half of its potential wealth. That is also why we strongly support the United Nations on that agenda.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“That initiative was proposed by African women and operated by the African Development Bank, and for which the major economic Powers have decided support through investment. We have supported Dr. Mukwege’s fund for the protection of victims of sexual violence and launched the Gender Equality Advisory Council, which we have expanded in conjunction with this session of the General Assembly and which, for the States that join it, consists of implementing at least one measure at the national level on women’s rights, based on best practices around the world. The fight for gender equality is crucial, because we have not won it within our societies, as evidenced by the persistence of feminicide in France and many other countries. We must give it legal status and build effective action to eradicate it.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“It is a way out of the short term; it is a decision to change our system. We have collectively committed, first and foremost, to a very proactive agenda for Africa and for the Sahel, its security, stability and development and, more broadly, to draft an agenda for Africa based on genuine security, development and reciprocity. In that context, we will host an Africa-France summit in France next June, based on economic partnerships and the involvement of civil societies in a spirit of deep reciprocity. It is an agenda for equality between women and men. In Biarritz, we launched the €251-million Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa initiative to support women entrepreneurs in Africa, and we will work with Angelique Kidjo to ensure that projects are quickly launched.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“We are no longer capable of solving abject poverty and new forms of inequality, such as inequalities of opportunity and gender, as well as in access to education in the poorest regions, access to health care and necessary treatments, and climate, when it comes to the most vulnerable countries or the poorest regions that are hit even harder by global warming or the increasing scarcity of biodiversity. On all those subjects, I presented the proposed the G-7 agenda last year and the desire to place the fight against inequality at its very core. I would like to briefly comment on that. I believe that we can collectively contribute to that subject in order for a response to begin to materialize, with a view to supporting the collective commitment already made to the Sustainable Development Goals.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“When we talk about contemporary common goods, the climate, education and inequalities, we can say that we understand and see things for what they are. Today, we have an array of experts who are telling us about and describing in unprecedented detail the situation of our world. If we have weakened, it is because we have too often decided to question the truth, contest the facts, favour the short term and sometimes protect certain interests, and the loss of meaning has taken hold. But the reality is there. Inequalities have again increased in our world among countries and within our countries. Our contemporary capitalism has become dysfunctional, leading to an unparalleled level of inequality.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“The major challenge for us today is that we are no longer capable of ensuring stability in an increasingly conflict-ridden world, having left behind the bipolar world in which we lived for decades. We no longer really have the last-resort guarantors of our deep-seated balances. As such, disorders have set in and things are often slow to be resolved effectively. I believe very strongly that the courage to build peace requires the reaffirmation of our values — those of human rights and the dignity of human beings, which must not be subject any form of contemporary relativism. It calls for practical re-engagement in all areas of operation that I mentioned earlier, with a view to building peace and stability and proposing tangible solutions to the people. I would refer, too, to the courage to take responsibility for our manifold challenges.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“That is the same highly pragmatic multilateralism that we adopted to fight terrorism on the Internet through the Aqaba process and in the Christchurch Call to Action Summit, held on 15 May in Paris. I pay tribute here to the commitment of the King of Jordan and the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Yesterday, we made a breakthrough when 50 countries joined that initiative and platforms were committed to set operational protocols and remove terrorist content. We will go even further, but we now have a concrete, real answer. We must continue to move forward, innovate and respond to contemporary challenges in a spirit of partnership, information and democracy. We must now innovate in the same spirit to secure our safety and security.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“I believe that we achieved that on the issue of climate when, after the American decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, we launched the One Planet Summit, together with the United Nations and the World Bank, which allowed us to maintain cohesion and engage new actors, investors and companies, as we saw again yesterday at the summit organized by the United Nations. We must engage new actors, create momentum and resist disintegration. In that regard, Russia’s ratification of the Paris Agreement, announced yesterday, is a sign of the success of that approach, in addition to what we have been able to undertake on many coalition issues.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“I believe very deeply in sovereignty so long as it represents both autonomy for oneself and the need for cooperation. What we need today is to reinvent what I defined when I last addressed the Assembly in speaking of robust multilateralism (see A/73/PV.6). That is not to say that our multilateralism is worn out, that we no longer listen to ourselves or that we are no longer effective. Rather, it is in acknowledgement that there is no solution to be found in national withdrawal or without cooperation. That cooperation must, however, produce concrete results and engage new actors. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of such robust, contemporary multilateralism.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“In the coming weeks, we will convene a summit in the Normandy format at the level of Heads of State and Government. On each of those subjects, the question that is always asked is how to recreate an effective framework for cooperation among States. I believe that that it is possible. I do not believe that the problems that we face today can be solved by diluting responsibilities or by a globalism that, in a way, neglects the people. In that regard, I agree with what President Trump said this morning. I also do not believe that the crises that we are experiencing would be best resolved by national withdrawal. I believe very deeply in patriotism so long as it incarnates both love of country and the aspiration to the universal.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“Those are all situations in which engaging in dialogue and crafting political solutions are the key to success. That courage to build peace is something we have seen in recent months at work in an unforeseen and unexpected way in the Sudan thanks to the strength of the Sudanese people, the capacity for dialogue between the army and the people, the work of the African Union and the role of Ethiopia, whose foresight and commitment to the whole region I want to salute here. It is that same courage to build peace that is now required in Ukraine. President Zelenskyi has taken the first steps, President Putin has been able to respond to him and progress has been made in recent weeks. We see our horizon and know that the next steps are implementing the Minsk agreements and, ultimately, building a lasting peace on the ground.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“There too, the future lies in building lasting cooperation in the region among the five States members of the Group of Five for the Sahel, securing the commitment of our armies, involving the United Nations, changing the mandate of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and fully integrating our objectives of fighting terrorism and entrenching sustainable security in the Sahel into the missions that we have deployed. It is essential to transfer MINUSMA’s mandate to Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, continue to involve all the armies in the region, re-engage all the region’s security forces in the fight against terrorism and commit our energy to development and stabilization.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“With respect to Libya, the Group of Seven (G-7) summit recalled our objectives and convictions. I believe very strongly that we currently need a robust inter-Libyan reconciliation conference and a firm commitment from the African Union, alongside the United Nations, to achieve that. Many initiatives have been undertaken. I welcome the commitment of Germany and all stakeholders who want to build peace. Lasting peace, however, can be built only on the basis of reconciliation among the Libyans themselves. In the Sahel, France’s commitment is well known, ongoing and reaffirmed.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“With regard to Syria, I would like to welcome the encouraging announcements made yesterday by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, and a decisive step forward with respect to the constitution, at last, by the long-awaited Constitutional Committee. We all look at the humanitarian situation in Idlib with vigilance and high standards. We are all committed to Syria’s stability, throughout all its regions, and to the protection of all its people. We will continue to work towards a sustainable and inclusive political solution in Syria, which entails the work of the constitutional committee and securing Syrian territory so as to enable the voluntary and safe return of all refugees. It further requires a free electoral process that will include all Syrian citizens.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“Thirdly, a regional security plan integrating the other crises in the region and the security of maritime transit flows must be drawn up. Finally, economic sanctions must be lifted. I am in no way naive, nor do I believe in miracles. I believe in the courage to build peace, and I know that the United States of America, Iran and all the signatories to this agreement have that courage. It is with the same conviction that we will continue our work on Syria, Libya and the Sahel, which has been discussed at length in recent weeks and, in particular, at the Group of Seven Summit in Biarritz.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“From that point on, the risk of a flare-up based on a calculation error or a disproportionate response has become greater today. Peace is at the mercy of an incident that is getting out of hand, and the consequences for the whole region and beyond would be too serious for us to accept living on the brink of disaster. So what can we do? More than ever, I believe very deeply, the time has come to resume negotiations among the United States of America, Iran, the signatories to the JCPOA and the Powers in the region that are primarily concerned with the region’s security and stability. What should be the terms and objectives of those negotiations? First, there must be complete certainty that Iran will never acquire nuclear weapons. Secondly, there must be an end to the crisis in Yemen.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“In 2018, after the United States withdrew from the 2015 Vienna Agreement, I proposed a comprehensive framework to preserve the Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action (JCPOA) and complement it with a broader approach to address the issues raised by Iran’s post-2025 nuclear programme, the country’s role in regional crises and its ballistic programme. Where are we today? In response to the American strategy and the European, Russian and Chinese desire to preserve the 2015 Vienna Agreement, Iran has responded with a strategy of maximum pressure on its regional environment. In that context, the increase in tensions was constant in recent months, and the 14 September attacks on Saudi Arabia have changed the situation.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“In all regions of the world, building peace is about taking the risk — the risk of dialogue, compromise, rebuilding trust — and in so many regions, that is what we need. That is what the Middle East needs today. That is what the Gulf region needs. Courage is not tensions, provocation, ripostes. It is a demanding consultation that is carried out in a transparent manner. From the very first time I addressed the General Assembly (see A/72/PV.4) I expressed my strong belief with respect to Iran that the strategy of applying pressure on the Iranian nuclear issue could lead only to an increase in tensions in the region if, basically and above all, it did not have clear prospects for achieving a diplomatic solution.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“On reflection, as I prepared to speak today, I was reminded of a text that has often been with me, namely, the Harvard commencement address given by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn in 1978 on the decline of courage. We lack courage, spectacularly and often. Basically, today I just wanted to tell the General Assembly that the appeal I would like to make would be on the revival of courage — on two subjects to begin with: the courage to know how to build peace and the courage to take responsibility. The courage to know how to build peace is important because, first of all, it takes courage to do so and because building peace always involves taking a risk, which consists in not simply defending one’s primary interests or one’s positions that have sometimes led to escalation or tensions.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“We have our youth, who are weighing in on the climate and freedoms. And we have, I must say, public opinion, which is more informed than ever before. And we have a framework, which is operative in this Hall today: the framework of free States that recognize each other and are supposed to work for the common good and prepare for the future of humankind, responding to these contemporary crises. We also have multilateral regional frameworks on many subjects and thematic frameworks on such topics as trade and economic cooperation. So what are we missing? What is it that makes us give speeches that make our peoples feel we cannot respond to their fears?”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“Never before in the history of the world has science been brought together in such a way as to be able to describe the challenges we face and provide the means to address them, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, to the point where we are building upon technological revolutions. It has been described thus: every year we know a little bit more. We have the funding, which is not lacking across the globe. We have an unrivalled capacity for innovation, which, on many of the subjects I have cited, is also a means of responding to these challenges: in the fight against poverty and in efforts to foster stability and respond to the major changes I have just mentioned. We have an unprecedented awareness of these contemporary evils.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“These conflicts are increasingly harsh, cruel to civilians, humanitarian workers and human rights defenders. As David Miliband says, we have entered an age of impunity. Commercial tensions are increasing, and concerns are growing about technological changes and their consequences. I do not want to paint a pessimistic picture here — and I know how tired delegations are of listening to the many speeches that have been given since this morning; indeed, I wish to spare us the litany of all the reasons for despair. Nevertheless, we have everything we need to meet these challenges, everything, and in a new way. First, we have knowledge.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“We are gathered here at the General Assembly at a time when the Secretary-General has chosen the very important theme of climate — we met on the subject yesterday — when impatience is being expressed everywhere and when everything in the world around us — or at least many things — could lead us to be pessimistic. We are not meeting our own expectations — the objectives that we have set for ourselves — in the fight against global warming and in the fight for biodiversity. The many tensions are at an unprecedented level in some parts of the world. Take, for example, what happened recently in the Gulf, or the challenges many of our friends in this Hall are confronting — our friends from the Sahel in particular, whose friendly faces I see here, and from many other regions.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“This is today. This is now. So we must not get used to it. We must not accept all these kinds of unilateralism. Every day pages are being ripped in a betrayal of our history. And I am not going to get used to it. This is what I have to say, very clearly. This nascent century is watching us, and our children are waiting. We must resolve our crises. We must work together to combat all our inequalities, but let us do so on a human level and in full accord with our principles, our histories and our universalism. In any case, that is my commitment to everyone here, and I am counting on us all.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“Then let us not be fashionable, because we have a duty to those who have made it possible for us to sit in this Hall. Because we must never forget that the genocides that are the reason we are here today were fuelled by the speeches that we are growing accustomed to, by the political spectacles that we applaud. Because we are now seeing international law and every kind of cooperation disintegrate, as if it was nothing, out of fear and complicity and because it looks good. But I will not do that. I will not do it, because I come from a country that helped to create the declarations that have brought us here, because I come from a country that stands tall, and while it has made many mistakes and done many bad things, it has been able to maintain a kind of universalism at every point in its own history and in international history.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“For us, united by the tragedies of the twentieth century, it should be a time for renewal and to rediscover the oath we have taken to save future generations from the scourge of war. I want us and our counterparts to take on new responsibilities during the Forum in order to chart the way for concrete actions in the service of peace. I know that many of us may be tired of multilateralism. In a world that is flooded with information and in which in a sense we are in a free-for-all, in which society is a reality show where it is fashionable and newsworthy to say the worst possible things, I know that denouncing the consequences of causes we have championed can be a successful political tactic and that defending cooperation and multilateralism may no longer be fashionable.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“We will point out that their universality not only does not run counter to a people’s sovereignty, it is rather the only way to ensure the preservation and exercise of those rights. France will be there to ensure that the world does not forget that clashing nationalisms only plunge us into the abyss, that when democracies lack the courage to defend their principles, they are weak, and that accumulated resentments, backed only by a fragile international system, can result in a global unleashing of violence twice in the space of one human life. I am speaking from our own experience. In a few weeks’ time, on 11 November, the Paris Peace Forum will present an opportunity for us to see a surge of thoughtfulness and courage as we attempt to rediscover what keeps us together here.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“We will ensure that by the end of the year, two thirds of the members of the General Assembly can support limiting the right of veto in the case of mass atrocities. We will defend international humanitarian law by supporting staff who take extraordinary risks to help civilians on the ground by negotiating humanitarian access to all theatres, one by one. On the seventieth anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we will remind the world that human rights are not a cultural thing. They are not simply values or revocable options, but a legal corpus enshrined in international treaties to which the members of the Assembly have freely consented.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“That is why we will support the agencies working on projects for peace and humanity — UNESCO, the conscience of the United Nations; the Human Rights Council; the International Criminal Court; the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, to which we will increase our contribution — because, I want to remind the Assembly, we are simply talking about enabling hundreds of thousands of children to go to school, nothing less, nothing more. We will defend expanding both member categories of the Security Council so that its composition reflects today’s balances of power and so that it is strengthened as a forum for consultation rather than obstruction.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“And it is the responsibility of France and all its European partners, of the European Union, to be in the vanguard in this fight, to build a new, modern humanism that refuses to yield to attempts to withdraw or to simple-mindedness and at the same time, as mediating Powers, to build these new rules for the international order. At a time when our collective system is cracking, I have to say that we have never needed it so much.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“It is not only on that continent that we will collectively win or lose our great battle against inequality — it is with that continent, because today it is in Africa that we find the most fervent defenders of multilateralism and regional integration. Our African partners have fully understood that we can only meet our common challenges together. And this new alliance with Africa will also be a focus of the French presidency of the G-7. I firmly believe that despite these fractures and challenges in the modern world order, we can put together a new vocabulary for action while also addressing the root causes of inequality today.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“Secondly, we must also change the modalities of our action, bringing into the scope of our collective action the major players who are not in this Hall or at the General Assembly, the big non-State actors who are helping to change the world but who do not participate enough in reducing the inequalities that these transformations bring, and by that I mean the major digital players, both in terms of taxation and of responsibility for combating the manipulation of information. We need to operate differently from our standard collective action where all our major challenges are concerned and include dialogue with these new private stakeholders and Internet giants. Thirdly, we must enable Africa to take its rightful place so that it can play a central part in rebuilding the international system.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“Rather than pursuing protectionism, we should all work together to thoroughly review the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. We must restore the WTO’s ability to resolve conflicts and establish rules for the unfair trade practices, non-compliance with intellectual property rights and forced technology transfers that make a level playing field impossible. Starting this year, the Group of Twenty summit in Argentina must provide us with a credible road map for rebuilding the WTO. That is also what we will have to do on the social front next year, during the centenary of the International Labour Organization.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“The alternative is to say that it is the rules that are not working, so we should retreat inwards towards isolationism and protectionism. But the only thing that leads to is heightened tensions, which do nothing to address serious inequalities. What I am proposing instead is that we put in place a collective mechanism to enable us to work together on what we are doing in each of our countries to reduce inequalities, to evaluate our actions but also to coordinate them better and to disseminate best practices. I therefore propose that international institutions — the United Nations, but the OECD as well, of course — support us in setting up such a mechanism, for which the G-7 must be the driving force. To defeat inequality, we must change our methods. First, we should revise both our trade and social rules.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“Only together can we effectively fight the inequalities that have fractured all of our societies and that have fuelled mistrust and the temptation to withdraw — inequalities that we have allowed to grow and to which we have been collectively unable to respond effectively. But none of us can effectively fight the inequalities I have decried if we act alone. If we do, there are essentially only two solutions. The first is to continually lower the bar and revert to the standards that we know, as we have been doing for decades. We have a trade war, so let us reduce workers’ rights, keep cutting taxes and fuel our inequalities that way in an effort to respond to our trade problems. What does that lead to? It reinforces the inequalities in our societies and the disruption that we are living through.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“We will work in the G-7 to ensure that the commitments made at the 2015 Climate Change Conference are increased, and if one of our members does not want to move forward, we will move forward anyway by seeking new coalitions and new formats, because the G-7’s mission is to remain a united group of countries committed to democracy. But today it must also contribute to the creation of new coalitions that will make it possible to improve and restructure the collective global system. So let us build new forms of cooperation to make progress and take decisions on those fundamental issues.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“Let us make a clear commitment, and let us all be equally clear, concrete and consistent. This is an emergency. So let us honour the commitments we have made. Let us no longer sign trade agreements with Powers that do not respect the Paris Agreement. Let us ensure that our business commitments integrate our environmental and social constraints. Let us work harder to involve sovereign wealth funds and financiers in this low-carbon-policy strategy. France will continue to be a global leader in this fight alongside everyone who wants to join.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“That is what we will do again tomorrow in New York, at the second One Planet Summit. We are told that it is already too late, that we cannot meet the goals. So let us speed up, let us together adopt the rules for implementing the Paris Agreement in December at the 24th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Let us implement the protocol against hydrofluorocarbon gases, which could enable us to reduce the average global temperature by one degree by 2050. Let us set ourselves the goal of concluding an ambitious draft global environmental pact by 2020, and ensuring that the Beijing Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the 2020 International Union for Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress in France will be decisive steps.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“But we will all be held accountable for the disasters that are multiplying before our very eyes, before our peoples and our own children. The proclaimed breakdown of the Paris Climate Change Agreement has been thwarted because we have been able to remain united, despite the decision of the United States to withdraw from it. That strength must continue to support us and help us to ward off all the fatalistic predictions. We are told that solutions exist but that the funding is lacking. So let us go find it, let us innovate. This is what we did last year in Paris, on 12 December, with many of those gathered here, at the One Planet Summit, with concrete commitments and first results. That is what we did at the beginning of the year in Delhi, with the International Solar Alliance.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“We will take up the initiative on the fight against counterfeit medicines and will intensify our response to major pandemics. I call on everyone here to mobilize. Lastly, we must fight urgently, body and soul, against environmental inequality. It is unacceptable that 45 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions are produced by 10 per cent of the planet’s richest inhabitants. As is the case with solar energy, we have an inefficient situation when the countries with the greatest potential and needs have the least access to appropriate technologies. It is unsustainable that 100 million more people will be condemned to extreme poverty by 2030 if we fail to meet our commitments to fighting global warming. Here too we must be united in combat. Some countries represented here are suffering more than others, and we owe them our solidarity.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“It is time for our world to stop victimizing women and finally make a place for them, one that they deserve, one where they can be leaders. We must ensure that they have access to education, health care, employment and economic and political decision-making everywhere, and we must fight all forms of violence against them. France therefore proposes to those Governments that want to move forward with us the creation of a coalition for enacting new legislation on equality between women and men. Fifty per cent of our development assistance will be devoted to projects aimed at reducing gender inequality. We must also mobilize against health inequality at the international level. In Lyon in 2019 we will host the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Replenishment Conference.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“Education and health will not only be the pillars of our societies in the twenty-first century, they will be the fundamental building blocks of our economies. We must also fight diligently against gender inequality. In France I have made this the signature issue of my five-year term, and I am launching an appeal here to make it a major global issue. Women and girls are the first of us to be affected by poverty, conflict and the consequences of global warming. They are the primary victims of gender-based and sexual violence, which too often hinders their freedom of movement and their ability to work and have control over their bodies. It is our responsibility in the twenty- first century to put an end to such violence, from street harassment to femicide.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“The mobilization of the G-7 already begun under the Canadian presidency should make it possible to go even further. We are at a key moment on this issue that will decide whether or not we are capable of dealing with the challenge we face. Between now and 2030 there will be 620 million more children needing schooling worldwide, including 444 million Africans. Are we going to provide for that? Are we going to give them all that they need for a solid foundation that will enable them to be agents for their own lives, to live as brothers in tomorrow’s world? If not, what kind of world are we creating? That is why I have committed France to this fight and why I insist so much on teacher training, vocational training and gender equality in education. That is why I urge everyone here to join in this great global surge for education.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“We must tackle modern inequalities today because they are at the root of the evil that I denounced at the beginning of my statement. We must address inequalities of opportunity, which are a moral aberration and an unsustainable reality. We cannot accept a world in which people do not have the same opportunities because of the country where they were born, or cannot go to school in certain countries because they are women, or do not have access to basic services. We kept the commitment made here last year with the President of Senegal. The Global Partnership for Education Financing Conference, held in February in Dakar, raised $2.5 billion to increase access to education around the world. That is a historic amount. France has increased its contribution tenfold.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“After Canada, whose leadership I applaud, France will assume the G-7’s next presidency. I would like to have a major reconsideration of its format in order to improve its association with various other Powers and devise new ways to coordinate. I also wanted it to be at the United Nations that I made the first announcement that the inequality agenda will be at the centre of the next G-7, and also that I intend to report on the results of the Biarritz G-7 next September, because the time when a club of rich countries could define the balances of power in the world by itself has long since passed and because it is impossible to separate the fate of each of its members from that of all the States members of the Assembly.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“We have made great progress in reducing inequalities among our countries, and we have created the framework for that in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, but the fight is not behind us. It is far from over. Wealth per capita is 50 times higher in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development than in low- income countries. Do we think that we can sustainably increase stability and balance in this state of affairs? No, we must take action. That is why, as I announced here last year (see A/72/PV.4), I have decided to increase France’s official development assistance by €1 billion starting in 2019. Our humanitarian funding will increase by 40 per cent. But it is also why the fight against inequality will be the priority of the French presidency of the Group of Seven (G-7) summit in 2019.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“We owe a response to the 783 million people living below the poverty line, to those suffering from hunger or chronic malnutrition and to those who do not have access to basic health care. We owe a response to the aspirations of the most important generation of young people in history — our own young people — amounting to nearly 2 billion people who are now between the ages of 10 and 24, and 90 per cent of whom live in developing countries. We owe a response to all those who look to us because their destiny depends on what we are or are not able to do here together in the Assembly. And those who forget that we owe an answer to all those people are wrong because they are sowing the seeds for tomorrow’s crises and because they will leave their children and ours in a much worse situation than we are in today.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“We owe a response to the 265 million children who do not have access to school, more than half of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa, and to the young girls who have equal access to education in less than 40 per cent of countries. We owe a response to the 700 million children who live in the regions most exposed to the consequences of climate change — the victims of floods, droughts, rising sea levels and the depletion of resources. We owe a response to the 200 million women who do not have access to contraception, to the more than 1 billion women who are not protected by law if they are victims of violence in their homes, and to all women whose global average pay is 23 per cent less than men and up to 40 per cent in rural areas.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)