YouSaid · the spoken record

Jacinda Ardern

lines on the record

59

first

2019-09-24

most recent

2022-09-24

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. “Now, it is our turn to stop and listen — to accept that our words and actions have immeasurable consequences and to speak not only like the whole world is listening but with the responsibility of someone who knows a small child somewhere might be listening too. The spaces in which we communicate are part of the challenge too. In an increasingly online world, we need to create spaces for the exchange of ideas, the sharing of technology and the exercise of free speech, while also acknowledging the potential for that technology to be used to cause harm. The events of 15 March were a staggering example of such harm and a deliberate effort to broadcast terror on a massive, viral scale over the Internet. The alleged terrorist did not just take the lives of 51 people, he did it live on Facebook.”

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

2. “The fact that I received so many letters from Muslim children from around the world in the weeks after 15 March speaks to the power of connection. Those children had no sense of distance. They may have never heard of New Zealand before 15 March. They just saw an act of hatred against their community and it felt close to them. Whether it is acts of violence, language intended to incite fear of religious groups or assumptions about ethnicities that breed distrust and racism — those actions and utterances are as globalized as the movement of goods and services. Children hear them, women hear them, people of faith hear them and our rainbow communities hear them.”

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

3. “Feeling safe means the absence of fear; living free from racism, bullying and discrimination; feeling loved, included and able to be exactly who you are. To feel truly safe, those conditions need to be universal — no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter where you live. The young Muslim boy in Kilbirnie, New Zealand, wanted to know if I could grant him all of those things. My fear is, that as a leader of a proudly independent nation, that is one thing that I cannot achieve alone, not anymore. In our borderless and technologically connected world, commentary on race, acts of discrimination based on religion, gender, sexuality or ethnicity are not neatly confined behind boundaries — they are felt globally.”

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

4. “I quickly crouched down next to him. He did not say his name or even “Hello”, he simply whispered, “Will I be safe now?” What does it take for a child to feel safe? As adults, we are quick to make the practical changes that will enable us to say that such a horrific act could never happen again — and we did that. Within 10 days of the attack, we made a decision to change our guns laws and banned military style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles in New Zealand. We have started on a second tranche of reforms to register weapons and to change our licensing regime. Those changes will help make us safer. But when you are a child, fear is not discrete and it cannot be removed through legislative acts or decrees of parliament.”

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

5. “Make no mistake, we do not claim to be a perfect nation. While we are home to more than 200 ethnicities, that does not mean we are free from racism or discrimination. We have wounds from our own history that, 250 years on from the first encounters between Maori and Europeans, we continue to address. But since the terrorist attack in New Zealand, we have had to ask ourselves many hard and many difficult questions. One example sticks in my mind. It was only days after the shooting that I visited a mosque in our capital city. After spending some time with community leaders, I exited and walked across the car park, where members of the Muslim community were gathered. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a young boy gesture to me. He was shy, almost retreating towards a barrier, but he also had something he clearly wanted to say.”

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

6. “Now we are known for something else. On 15 March 2019, an alleged terrorist undertook the most horrific attack on a place of worship, taking the lives of 51 innocent people, devastating our Muslim community and challenging our sense of who we are as a country. There is no changing a nation’s history, but we can choose how it defines us. In Aotearoa, New Zealand, the people who lined up outside mosques with flowers, the young people who gathered spontaneously in parks and open spaces in a show of solidarity, the thousands who stopped in silence to acknowledge the call to prayer seven days later and the Muslim community who showed only love — those are the people who collectively decided that New Zealand would not be defined by an act of brutality and violence, but instead by compassion and empathy.”

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

7. “Physical events have taught us that in obvious ways — oil spills that show no respect for maritime boundaries; nuclear accidents and testing, the impacts of which are never confined to the exact location in which they occur; and so on. Yet our interdependence, our connection, runs so much deeper than that. Experiences in recent years should lead us to question whether any of us ever truly operate in isolation anymore. That is a question that we, the remote but connected nation of New Zealand, have been grappling with this year. There are things that we are well known for in New Zealand — green rolling hills, perfect, you might say, for hobbits to hide in and for plenty of sheep to roam. We are known for manaakitanga, or the pride we take in caring for our guests, so much so, that it even extends to our most entrenched sporting rivals.”

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

8. “For decades we have assembled here under the assumption that we narrowly cooperate only on the issues that overtly impact one another, issues like international trade rules, the law of the sea or humanitarian access to war zones. The space in-between has, essentially, been left to us. We, the political leaders of the world, have been the authors of our own domestic politics and policies. Decisions have been our own and we have ultimately lived with the consequences — but the world has changed. Over time, we have become increasingly interdependent. We see more and more often domestic decisions that have global ramifications.”

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

9. “Ei nga tangata katoa, e manaa kitia ana te whenua, o te Ai Whanui Ei nga kaitiaki, e riterite ana, nga whenua, hurl rauna, i to Ao Ia tu tatou ki te wero hia I nga wero I te ingoa o te tika o nga me a katoa Tema koutou katoa. I greet the Assembly in Te Reo Maori, the language of the tangata whenua, or first people, of Aotearoa, New Zealand. I do so, not just because it is the same way I would begin an address if I were at home but because there are challenges that we face as a world that I know no better way to express. Maori concepts, like kaitiakitanga, represent the idea that all of us here today are guardians — guardians of the land, of our environment and of our people. There is a simplicity to the notion of sovereign guardianship.”

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