“Our Common Agenda is an agenda of urgent collective action” – UN Chief (22 October 2021)

United Nations published this video item, entitled “”Our Common Agenda is an agenda of urgent collective action” – UN Chief (22 October 2021)” – below is their description.

“You all have heard my warnings; and many of you share my sense of urgency.

The climate crisis is looming, the pandemic is upending our world, and conflicts continue to rage and worsen.

The world is experiencing its biggest shared test since the Second World War, and I believe we are at a turning point.

The choices we make — or fail to make today – could result, as I have been saying, in further breakdown and a future of perpetual crises, or a breakthrough to a better, more sustainable, peaceful future for people and for the planet.

Our Common Agenda is an agenda of urgent collective action to strengthen multilateralism and make it fit for the challenges we are facing in the 21st century.

If there is a central message in my report it concerns preventing war and strengthening global peace and security.

It builds on the great preventive treaties of our time, but also Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement, and seeks to accelerate their implementation.

It sets out the parameters of an upgraded social contract, anchored in human rights, to tackle growing inequality and exclusion, and build trust and social cohesion.

It is for us, the Secretariat, to support Member States, because obviously the social contract will be done at country level, and social contracts will be different according to the options that in each country are made by the Government and the people in its different forms of organization and dialogue.

The agenda calls for renewed solidarity among peoples and greater responsibility for the long-term consequences of today’s policies on young people and future generations.

It also recommends better management of critical commons – usually we can see that the global commons – the oceans, the atmosphere, outer space and Antarctica – but there are other global public goods: health, the economy, science and digital technology, among others.

World peace in itself is a critical global public good and a global public good that the United Nations was created to deliver – our primary mission.

The Peacebuilding Commission is therefore central to my report on Our Common Agenda, and I thank you for this important opportunity to brief you today.

Excellencies,

Seventy-six years since the United Nations was founded, we have successfully avoided another world war.

However, peace remains elusive in many parts of the world.

Conflict and violence continue to devastate lives and livelihoods in many regions.

In others, the technical absence of war does not mean that people enjoy peace because record numbers of people are on the move, fleeing rising levels of violence of all kinds.

While we have made progress, including the twin General Assembly and Security Council resolutions on peacebuilding and sustaining peace, a central element when we consider the common agenda we must do better to deliver on the promise of the United Nations Charter.

And the report proposes a New Agenda for Peace that takes a comprehensive, holistic view of global security.

Such an Agenda should include measures to reduce strategic risks from nuclear arms, cyberwarfare and lethal autonomous weapons; strengthen foresight of future risks; and reshape responses to all forms of violence, including by criminal groups and even violence at home.

It should boost our investment in prevention and peacebuilding by addressing the root causes of conflict, increasing support for regional initiatives that can fill critical gaps – and we have excellent experiences with the African Union, for instance; and put women and girls at the centre of security policy.

I hope that work to delineate this New Agenda for Peace will include a process of deep reflection on what peace means in today’s world, and how we can most effectively work together to achieve it, leaving no-one behind – a reflection in which the Peacebuilding Commission has a central role to play.

Excellencies,

I believe several areas require particular effort and attention in the New Agenda for Peace, either because the threats we face have evolved, or because our capacity to act has progressed.

First, we need to reduce and better manage existential risks that could – even inadvertently – bring about our own annihilation.

This calls for a re-commitment to the non-use of nuclear weapons and a timetable for their progressive elimination. We also need new measures to de-escalate cyber-related risks, and to boost cooperation to prevent and counter terrorism.

Second, we need to strengthen strategic foresight and capacities to identify and manage new risks.

(…)” – António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations [Excerpt]

Full remarks [as delivered]: https://www.un.org/sg/en/node/260252

United Nations YouTube Channel

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About This Source - United Nations

The United Nations (UN) was established after World War II with the aim of preventing future wars. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states.

The UN’s chief administrative officer is the Secretary-General, currently Portuguese politician and diplomat António Guterres, who began his five year-term on 1 January 2017.

 

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