Eritrea, 2022

First, allow me to express our congratulations on your election as President of the General Assembly at its seventh-seventh session. I also want to congratulate His Excellency Mr. Abdullah Shahid on his successful stewardship of the Assembly during his presidency of hope at the seventh-sixth session.

The annual session of the General Assembly, held under the fitting theme, “A watershed moment: transformative solutions to interlocking challenges”, takes place at an exceedingly preoccupying time of profound, intertwined and multiple crises of epic proportions. Those calamities have already had an adverse impact on all coordinates of our global village.

In the past two and a half years, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has exacted a considerable human toll across the globe. It has also introduced chronic economic difficulties and structural setbacks, through domestic economic downturns and the disruption of international supply chains. While the scourge persists, we are confronted these days with the equally perilous fallout of climate change and global warming, which exacerbates the already precarious situation. Furthermore, cyclical conflicts, which have assumed exceptionally dangerous and almost apocalyptic dimensions with the war in Ukraine, have ratcheted up the impending crisis to unprecedented levels.

The COVID-19 pandemic aside, the other interlocking variables and dimensions of the crisis constitute the cumulative consequences and telltale symptoms of a tenuous and highly flawed global governance architecture. They are by-products and manifestations of the systemic failure of the unipolar world order that has prevailed for more than 30 years. In reality, the much-vaunted rules-based international order represents a skewed set of duplicitous, asymmetric and non-consensus-based norms and regulations. The fact is that it was essentially designed to advance and safeguard the privileges of its principal architects to the exclusion of the majority of other nations and peoples. Its rather monolithic and condescending ideological perspective leaves no room or space to historical context, distinct realities and cultures or, above all, to the independent policy choices of other sovereign peoples and nations. Indeed, all other sovereign peoples and nations are expected to fully adhere and kowtow, in their international relations and domestic policies alike, to the gold standards stipulated in the flimsy rules- based international order.

In the final analysis, the costly wars of intervention, especially in Africa and the Middle East, in the past 30 years, the heavy-handed meddling in domestic affairs, the imposition of illicit and unilateral sanctions, the distortion and weaponization of human rights — in brief, all those episodes of international and regional instability — emanate from and are the direct derivatives of the faulty global governance architecture. The negative ramifications of this dysfunctional system are not confined to the sovereign nations and peoples of the global South. The extreme and ridiculous inequalities, whereby less than 1 per cent of the population owns 99 per cent of national wealth; unbridled consumerism, which has bred and continues to aggravate climate change; and the atomization of societies that has literally decimated social compassion and community care by fostering exclusive and unnatural individualism are dangerous trends that will ultimately undermine the social fabric and stability of individual countries and our global village at large.

My rather extensive views on the flaws of the global governance structure do not stem solely from a general and abstract desire by my Government to seek timely and urgent remedies, as underlined in the theme of the current session of the General Assembly. Eritrea has indeed borne the brunt of this unfair international order through illicit sanctions, the use of surrogate forces to create a situation of permanent conflict and instability, as well as the weaponization of human rights to isolate and ostracize the young nation.

As we all agree, the gravity of the interlocking problems with which our global village must grapple is so immense that it warrants urgent and comprehensive remedial action. We are truly living on borrowed time. The prevailing global governance architecture has lost legitimacy and corroded the vital global equilibrium that is crucial for continuity and sustainability. In this respect, it behoves us to rise to the occasion to summon the requisite political will in order to roll back and rectify this dangerous trend. We must recognize that the resources and technological know-how at the disposal of humankind are more than what is required if we set our minds to an inclusive and compassionate world order.

In that respect and in our modest view, first, our global village and the United Nations system must devise a new international order that is anchored on consensus, with the full and equal participation of its constituents.

Secondly, the sacrosanct principles of the equality of all Member States and respect for the sovereignty and political independence of nations and peoples must be upheld.

Thirdly, the equitable representation of all Member States in all decision-making international bodies must be guaranteed through viable and sustainable modalities and mechanisms.

Lastly, selective and partial parameters that impede our collective well-being and the fostering of a compassionate social system will require thorough review.