56. We must stop the genocide in Gaza
The debate of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, which opened on September 23, will continue through September 27 and conclude on Monday, September 29, 2025.
The theme for the general debate is "Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights".
I watched some of the prominent speakers, but most of them failed to make an impression. So, when Slovenia’s President, Nataša Pirc Musar, started speaking, I was already bored.
But to my surprise, her very first sentence made me sit up and listen to her.
She started by emphasizing that, “after the Second World War and the Cold War, there were hopes for and beliefs in enduring peace, security, and cooperation, as outlined in the UN Charter. Sadly, that vision has not come true. In fact, the situation has gotten worse. That is because the Security Council is failing to meet the world's expectations — if it ever has.”
Strong and very correct words.
She continued. Read her full speech -
“Instead of working for peace, some of the five permanent Council members work in their own interests instead. The promise of the Sustainable Development Goals is also faltering, as millions of people are pushed further from the most basic services.
International law appears to stand at the precipice of irrelevance. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide risks becoming a relic, and International Criminal Court prosecutors face intimidation. Countries are withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and UN agencies are diminishing multilateralism.
How to explain these trends to children, whether to tell them the mighty may kill with impunity because they can. Therefore, strengthening the UN is essential by establishing a permanent advocacy network to provide the Pact for the Future with unconditional, sustained political support.
(She proposed the creation of a Global Forum for the Future, which would be a movement of nations working for multilateralism to drive the Pact of the Future’s implementation forward at every level.)
There must be reform of the Security Council, which should not be a body standing above international law to defend some interests at the expense of others. The Assembly must request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on whether any permanent Council member can claim a legitimate veto right over such norms.
The gap in gender equity must be confronted. Only 13 percent of leaders of multilateral organizations have been women, and the UN has never had a woman serve as Secretary-General.
Not only gender representation, but also actual gender equity, must be achieved. It benefits entire societies and requires systematic change. A gender perspective must be in every strand of international organisations’ policymaking, a result of the effective participation of women and girls. The UN can only succeed as a community if we accept that there is no future for humanity without a fundamental change.
The mandate of the Global Forum for the Future would be to push towards such a change that would inspire hundreds of millions of people.
Governments, artists, influencers, and visionaries, utilizing science, technology, and global connectivity, can join forces to defend humanity, creating an irresistible voice that demands real action by all Governments on the Pact for the Future, she added.
They can hold to account those behind wars, genocidal policies, and crimes against humanity. This requires inclusive and fearless leadership.
We must not surrender to a world where power alone prevails. If leaders can offer nothing but terror, conflict, pollution, fear, inequalities, and war, then we are complicit in crimes against our civilisation and our planet.
Efforts to reject arrogance, hatred, and willful blindness regarding inequality and injustice, wars of aggression, crimes against humanity, and genocide should be undertaken because they tear us apart for generations.
We should do the right thing.
We did not stop the Holocaust, we did not stop the genocide in Rwanda, and we did not stop the genocide in Srebrenica.
We must stop the genocide in Gaza.
There are no excuses anymore. None.”
The world needs leaders like her.