Italy, 2025

The Assembly will hear now an address by Her Excellency Giorgia Meloni, President of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Italy. I request the protocol to escort Her Excellency and invite her to address the Assembly. President Baerbock, Secretary General Guterres, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen. We are living a historical accelerated phase, rich in opportunities, but also, perhaps above all, dense with dangers, suspended between war and peace. According to the Global Peace Index 2024, there are currently 56 armed conflicts ongoing in the world, the highest number since the Second World War. We live in a world profoundly different from the one in which the United Nations was founded, when in 1945, 51 nations, today nearly all of the nations of the world, decided to come together to found an international organization whose main purpose was to prevent war. The question we must ask ourselves 80 years later, while looking around us, is have we succeeded? The answer, you all know, because it lies in the headlines and is merciless. Peace, dialogue, diplomacy seem no longer able to persuade or to prevail. The use of force prevails on far too many occasions. And the scenario before us is that which Pope Francis described with unique effectiveness, a Third World War fought piecemeal. Obviously, among the major conflicts underway is, of course, the large-scale war of aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Three and a half years ago, on February 24, 2022, Moscow decided to attack Kiev. And I believe not enough reflection has been given to the consequences of that choice, to a point I consider fundamental. The Russian Federation, a permanent member of the Security Council, deliberately trampled on Article 2 of the UN Charter, violating the integrity and political independence of another sovereign state with the aim of annexing its territory. And still today, it shows no willingness to seriously accept any invitation to sit at the peace table. This deep wound inflicted on international law, as could be foreseen, unleashed destabilizing effects far beyond the borders in which that war is taking place. The conflict in Ukraine has rekindled and set off several other crises. Meanwhile, the United Nations has become even more divided. It is no coincidence that Hamas took advantage of the weakening of this architecture to launch, on October 7, 2023, its attack against Israel. The ferocity and brutality of that attack, the hunt for unarmed civilians, prompted Israel to a reaction that was at first legitimate, because every state and every people has the right to defend itself. But the response to aggression must always respect the principle of proportionality. This applies to individuals and all the more so to states. And Israel has exceeded that limit with a large-scale war disproportionately involving the Palestinian civilian population. And it is in crossing this limit that the Jewish state has ended up violating humanitarian norms, causing a massacre among civilians. This choice, which Italy has repeatedly deemed unacceptable, will lead us to vote in favor of some of the sanctions proposed by the European Commission against Israel. But we do not side with those who heap all the blame for what is happening in Gaza and Israel, because it was Hamas that unleashed the war. It is Hamas that could end the suffering of Palestinians by immediately releasing all the hostages. It is Hamas that seems intent on thriving on the suffering of the people it claims to represent. Israel must free itself from the trap of this war. It must do so for the history of the Jewish people, for its democracy, for the innocent, and for the universal values of the free world of which it is part. And to end the war, concrete solutions are needed. Peace is not built only with appeals or with ideological proclamations embraced with enthusiasm by those who in truth do not want peace. Peace is built with patience, with courage, with reasonableness. The children of Gaza, like those Italy is proudly receiving and treating in its hospitals, are asking for answers that can improve their condition. And to that we are committed. Italy is and will be there for anyone willing to work on a serious plan for the release of hostages, a permanent ceasefire, the exclusion of Hamas from any governance dynamic in Palestine, the gradual withdrawal of Israel from Gaza, and the involvement of the international community in managing the subsequent phase of the ceasefire, leading to the realization of the two-state perspective. In this regard, we consider very interesting the proposals that the President of the United States has discussed recently with Arab countries, and we are ready to lend a hand. We believe that Israel has no right to prevent the future creation of a Palestinian state, nor to build new settlements in the West Bank. To that end, for this reason, we have signed the New York Declaration on the Two-State Solution. This is Italy's historic position on the Palestinian question, and it has never changed. At the same time, we believe that the recognition of Palestine must have two indispensable preconditions. The release of all Israeli hostages and Hamas's renunciation of any role in the government of Palestine for those who unleashed the conflict cannot be rewarded. And thus we return to the starting point, the rules. The force of law in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in every scenario where war dominates and reason seems lost. There's no escaping, colleagues, the most important question, which is the reason we're all here together today. Is the United Nations architecture we built 80 years ago up to task in the face of the challenges we are facing today? It is not. In multilateralism, dialogue, and diplomacy, without institutions that function as they should are only empty words. We must recognize our limits. We must recognize that a profound reform of the United Nations is necessary and urgent. Not an ideological reform, but a pragmatic, realistic one. One that respects the sovereignty of nations and opens to shared solutions. We need an agile, efficient institution able to respond quickly to crises, transparent in its mission and costs, capable of minimizing bureaucracy, waste, duplications. What we call the glass palace must be truly a house of glass. The reform Italy has in mind, starting with the Security Council, must respect the principles of equality, democracy, representativeness, and accountability. We do not need new hierarchies nor new permanent seats. Simply because they would not solve the decision-making paralysis that has undermined the credibility of this institution. We are open to discussing reform without any prejudice, including on the basis of proposals already advanced by the Uniting for Concensus group. But we want a reform that serves to represent everyone better, not to give more representation to just a few. But to be effective, it is not only institutions we must reform. Because we're facing a change of era. And this requires a profound revision of all the tools we have to regulate relations among nations and defend the rights of people, including international conventions. I'm thinking, for example, of conventions regulating migration and asylum. These are rules enshrined in an era when mass irregular immigration did not exist, nor did human trafficking. Conventions that are no longer current and which, when interpreted ideologically and one-sidedly by politicized judiciaries, they end up trampling on the law instead of upholding it. Together with other European states, we have raised this issue and tend to pursue it, not to lower the level of guarantees, but to build a system that keeps pace with the times, capable of protecting fundamental human rights while safeguarding the sacrosanct prerogative of every nation to protect its citizens and its borders, exercise sovereignty, and govern migration, which impacts citizens, particularly the most vulnerable. The international community must unite in combating human trafficking. The United Nations, like other international institutions such as the European Union, cannot look the other way or protect, in the end, criminals in the name of presumed civil rights. Likewise, the United Nations cannot hypocritically consider some human rights less worthy of protection than others. I am thinking above all of the denied value of religious freedom and of the tens of millions of people worldwide, largely Christians, persecuted, massacred in the name of their faith. We also need a new model of cooperation among nations, but building it requires humility, awareness, and trust in the counterpart before us. Italy is seeking to do its part in this as well. Above all, with the Maté Plan for Africa, in the last three years we have launched our cooperation plan with Africa and extended its reach to 14 nations. We have built collaborations with the United Nations, the European Union and its Global Gateway, the G7, the African Union, and the African Development Bank, international financial institutions, as well as several bilateral partners such as the United Arab Emirates, whom I wish to thank. This complementarity has earned us, last July, the honor of co-organizing with Ethiopia the third UN Food Systems Summit, the responsibility of being an active part of the major infrastructure project of the Lobito Corridor between Angola and Zambia, the opportunity to build public-private partnerships that attract investment and deliver concrete results. As is happening in Algeria, where we will reclaim over 36,000 hectares of desert for cultivation, benefiting over 600,000 people. As is happening with the opening of the AI Hub for Sustainable Development, involving hundreds of African startups in the development of artificial intelligence, and as is happening with the extension of the Blue Raman Cable to East Africa, linking India to European economies via the Middle East and the Mediterranean. We, unlike other actors, have no ulterior motives in Africa. We are not interested in exploiting the continent for the rich raw materials it possesses. Rather, we want Africa to prosper by processing its own resources, creating jobs and prospects for its best synergies with stable governments and dynamic, secure societies. But this path cannot avoid addressing an issue that can no longer be postponed, the debt of African nations. Italy plans to convert over the next 10 years the entire amount of debt for the economically least-developed nations, according to World Bank criteria, and to reduce by 50% that of lower-middle-income nations. The entire operation over 10 years will allow us to convert into local development projects over 235 million euros of debt. This is an initiative to which the Italian government, especially in this jubilee year, attaches great importance, and which we hope may serve as an example for other nations as well, because it is not only an economic matter, but one of justice, of dignity, and of the future. Dear colleagues, 30 years of blind-faith globalization have ended. Its aftershocks were underestimated, and today we face unexpected consequences, which were not truly unexpected, grave in their impact on citizens, families, and businesses. Things have not gone well, contrary to promises made. And let me give you some more news. Things could get much worse if we do not halt the artificial creation of unsustainable production models, such as the green plans that in Europe and across the West are leading to de-industrialization far sooner than decarbonization. The conversion of entire production sectors on the basis of theories that ignore the needs and the economic capacities of people has been a colossal mistake, causing suffering among the most vulnerable social classes and dragging the middle class downward, imposing irrational consumption choices. Unsustainable environmentalism has nearly destroyed the automobile sector in Europe, created problems in the United States, caused job losses, burdened competitiveness, and depleted knowledge. And most paradoxically, it has not improved the overall health of our planet. This is not, of course, about denying climate change, but about affirming reason, which above all means technological neutrality and gradual reforms instead of ideological extremism, respecting the environment while keeping humanity at the center. Because it took centuries to build our systems, but only a few decades to end up in an industrial desert. And as I said many times before, in the desert there's nothing green. Colleagues, delegates, ladies and gentlemen, this year we're not only celebrating the 80th anniversary of the birth of this Assembly, but also the 70th anniversary of Italy's membership in the United Nations, a double anniversary that places on us an even greater responsibility to uphold the founding principles and values of this organization. With the awareness that to do so we must make the tools effective to defend those principles and values of our time, so that our action may be more incisive and truly responsive to the needs of our societies. The choice that we have is simple. Either leave everything as it is, or take refuge in what is easy, or show our citizens that we will not waste the historic opportunity, which this time, with its multiple challenges, has handed us, to build a fairer and safer world. Because as St. Francis, the most Italian of saints, who gave his name to the city where this organization was born, said, difficult battles are reserved only for those who have exemplary courage. It is time, I believe, to show that courage. Thank you. On behalf of the Assembly, I wish to thank the President of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Italy.