NEW YORK — When the United Nations rose from World War II's rubble, its birth reflected a widespread aspiration that humanity could be lifted up and dispatched down a positive path — if only there was a coherent, informed, unified effort of good faith among countries and their leaders. That would require persistence, compromise and, above all, hope.
“Our world has never been more threatened, or more divided,” the U.N. secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said Tuesday, setting the tone with his first words as he opened the meeting. “The world,” he said, “must wake up.” For nations to commit to being united — and to actually follow through — isn't easy in a fractured world brimming with problems that often come down hardest on the least powerful. The notion of nations playing on a level field may sound fair and just, but smaller countries insist that principle crumbles when power dynamics come into play.What’s more, the whole concept of “multilateralism,” an ever-present U.N.
That structure remains to this day, and some call it out of step with a fragmented world where many voices not amplified in the past are increasingly expecting to be heard and heeded. African nations, for example, have been demanding for years to have permanent representation on the Security Council for their 1.2 billion people. “We must eradicate hierarchies of power,” Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio said.
“Indeed, we are in a much better place than a year ago,” Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova said Tuesday. And from Romanian President Klaus Iohannis: “While the pandemic affected almost all aspects of our lives, it also provided us with opportunities to learn, adapt and do things better." “The world – this precious blue sphere with its eggshell crust and wisp of an atmosphere – is not some indestructible toy, some bouncy plastic romper room against which we can hurl ourselves to our heart’s content,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, channeling the global mood in his uniquely colorful way, said Wednesday night.
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