Här kan ni läsa Flaminia Minellis anförande i sin helhet:
“ABANDON ALL HOPE?”
God kväll och tack för att ni inte bara har bjudit in mig att tala här, utan också för att ni låter mig göra det på engelska. Som ni hör är min svenska ännu inte särskilt bra!
And after mispronouncing Swedish, I will stay on subject by commencing this speech citing a very influential Swede, Mr. Hans Rosling.
In his famous book ‘Factfulness’, he taught us how we fooled ourselves when we thought the world in 2018 was worse off than in the past. In fact, according to his research, “28 percent of people worldwide were malnourished in 1970. Today, that figure is 11 percent. Crop yields have nearly quadrupled since 1961. At the dawn of the 20th century, almost no countries allowed women to vote. Today, 193 out of 194 do. The share of people with access to electricity increased from 72 to 85 percent from 1991 to 2014.” And I could continue.
Why then do we feel that way? Why does it feel as if we live in a worse place today than in the past?
In my opinion, over the last few years a progress – and a peace – that particularly in the Western part of the world we took for granted has been interrupted.
Armed conflicts have actually increased – some geographically closer, some further afield.
And yet all significant to all of us sitting in this beautiful cathedral tonight.
Why?
Because the world has grown smaller, and we do not know any longer what has the power to impact us.
Is it the war next door or a climate-related catastrophe a thousand kilometres away?
Is it the virus that grew in a computer on the opposite side of the world and gets to yours in the blink of an eye or another kind of virus that grew out of the melting permafrost close to one of the poles – and can also get to you in the blink of an eye?
We have effectively become one world.
And yet, in this ever increasingly limited space, inequalities have not shrunk accordingly. We are physically and digitally closer and yet there is an abyss between some and the others.
There are abysses between some children and their dreams.
Abysses between some women and a safe life.
The space one needs to overcome to reach out to someone right next to us sometimes seems impossible to bridge.
Take a moment to look around.
How difficult would it be for you to reach out a hand to the person sitting beside you?
They are all human beings like you and yet, how many things do you feel separate you from them?
A different childhood? A different origin? A different perception of values?
Inequality might be diminishing but it is still entrenched in our systems, in our structures and in our thinking.
Our world is built out of a series of ‘us versus them’ circles made to perpetuate conflict and inequality under the false guise of making us secure, defended in our different attitudes, statuses, and values. Us the rich versus them the poor. Us the cultivated versus them the ignorant. Us the men versus them the women.
And these dichotomies are unfortunately reproduced everywhere, including in the multilateral system.
The Security Council, the main organ dealing with peace and security issues within the United Nations as the only global international organization, is fractured along several of these circles, sometimes paralysed. Us the south versus them the north. Us the post-colonised versus them the colonisers. Us the so-called developed countries versus them the ‘developing’.
International order as we grew used to knowing it seems to be crumbling – precedents are opening the door to acceptance of aggressive wars, denial of humanitarian aid, and outspoken refutation of the universality of human rights.
So if my partly evidence-based impression that progress – and peace – has been interrupted is true, the logical next question is: why?
I am an optimist.
And therefore, I like to think that it is because that progress was seriously putting in danger those who derive their very own power from instigating and perpetuating those very same inequalities, those very same conflicts.
That what we are witnessing today is an obstacle put up to resist an unstoppable change towards the global governance of respect and human rights that is the essence of the United Nations Charter.
The dream of equality where we are truly all ‘us’ and where, because we do not need to defend ourselves against ‘them’, we are – finally – at peace.
So together with Dante centuries ago, I have a simple message for you.
“Abandon all hope”.
You have heard me correctly.
I am encouraging you all to stop hoping.
Because – I am stealing someone’s sentence here – “hoping is waiting for someone else to do it.”
And hoping in the world of crucial gambles and existential threats that we are living in today is no longer enough.
As Eleanor Roosevelt, a champion for human rights and the United Nations project, said: “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe it. One must work at it.”
But what can we do?
There is a popular tale that tells of a great sea storm that threw hundreds of thousands of starfishes onto the beach. A person walking along the shore in the morning saw someone picking up the starfishes and throwing them into the sea. “Why are you doing this?” he asked, “You will never be able to throw all these thousands of starfishes back into the sea so what difference does it make?”. The other person smiled, picked up another starfish and threw it back in the sea while saying: “It makes a difference for this one.”
If we are at a crossroads – and I believe that we are – we each have the responsibility to push the world in the right direction.
I work at the United Nations not because I have an allegiance with the organization but because I believe in its purpose. With all of the UN’s weaknesses, I believe in the Charter and in the thousands of people who have worked – sometimes died, like Secretary General Hammarskjold and many others – to make it a reality.
I believe in my principled colleagues working against all odds in the most difficult places in the world, picking up a starfish one at a time.
With their actions, they are building and re-building the one thing that we should never lose: trust in the the vision that is set out in the UN’s Charter and that we are morally responsible to continue striving to reach.
In response to the changes that have impacted multilateralism, last year the Secretary-General launched a series of briefs articulated around his vision titled ‘Our Common Agenda.’ One of them, the New Agenda for Peace, identifies trust, solidarity and universality as the three grounding principles for international cooperation in the area of peace and security.
Those principles – and other ideas of the New Agenda for Peace around disarmament, nuclear weapons, counterterrorism, new drivers of conflict such as climate change, and others – are now being examined by Member States as they prepare for the Summit of the Future, to be held in New York in September this year.
The Summit of the Future is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance cooperation on critical challenges and address gaps in global governance, reaffirm existing commitments including to the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Charter, and move towards a reinvigorated multilateral system that is better positioned to positively impact people’s lives.
The Summit’s main outcome – the Pact for the Future – is expected to galvanize the will of Member States around a common vision to address the challenges of today in order to be fit for the future tomorrow.
This is one of the areas in which creating strong in-country support, for example in Sweden, could lend strength to progressive ideas and coalitions to push multilateralism and global governance forward.
According to the Austrian philosopher and psychotherapist Alfred Adler ‘one feels worth when one is beneficial to the community.’
Nowhere in the world, have I witnessed as strong a sense of community as in Sweden. Corporatism, it seems, is in your DNA and your compatriots have done much good by socializing those practices in other countries.
Cooperation destroys barriers to build bridges, to expand the sense and meaning of community – the feeling of worth.
And, again Adler, it is ‘when people are able to feel that they have worth, that they can possess courage.’
I am asking you tonight to be among those who are brave, and act.
Stop hoping.
Dare to embody the change that you want to see. Now.
Be a starfish picker.
Tack.
