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| Mr Guterres in Tripoli, Libya. UN Photo/Florencia Soto Niño |
Mr Guterres began:
Excellencies,
We have started 2023 staring down the barrel of a confluence of challenges unlike any other in our lifetimes.
Wars grind on.
The climate crisis burns on.
Extreme wealth and extreme poverty rage on.
The gulf between the haves and have nots is cleaving societies, countries and our wider world.
Epic geopolitical divisions are undermining global solidarity and trust.
This path is a dead end.
We need a course correction.
As a vivid judgement on humanity he cites the example of the Doomsday Clock:
That symbolic clock was created 76 years ago by atomic scientists, including Albert Einstein. Year after year, experts have measured humanity’s proximity to midnight – in other words, to self-destruction.
In 2023, they surveyed the state of the world – with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the runaway climate catastrophe, rising nuclear threats that are undermining global norms and institutions.
And they came to a clear conclusion. The Doomsday Clock is now 90 seconds to midnight, which means 90 seconds to total global catastrophe.
This is the closest the clock has ever stood to humanity’s darkest hour – and closer than even during the height of the Cold War.
In truth, the Doomsday Clock is a global alarm clock. We need to wake up – and get to work.
The manner of behaviour promoted by some ideologies, institutions and political leaders are not only self-defeating but also immoral, Mr Guterres says:
What is immoral, sinful from a religious perspective, will by its very nature be opposed to true human well-being. Pope Francis, in his encyclical letters to world has implored everyone to welcome rather than despise the bonds that tie us together. His encyclicals have been described this way:The good news is that we know how to turn things around – on climate, on finance, on conflict resolution, on and on. And we know that the costs of inaction far exceed the costs of action. But the strategic vision – the long-term thinking and commitment – is missing.
Politicians and decisionmakers are hobbled by what I call a preference for the present. There is a bias in political and business life for the short-term. The next poll. The next tactical political maneuver to cling to power. But also the next business cycle – or even the next day’s stock price.
The future is someone else’s problem. This near-term thinking is not only deeply irresponsible – it is immoral. And it is self-defeating.
In 2015, Pope Francis completed the encyclical Laudato Si’ on May 24 on the care for our common home which has been foundational for Catholics in relation to listening to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, highlighting that all of creation is interconnected and emphasizing climate change and the acceleration and injustice of the ecological crisis and climate emergency.The most recent encyclical issued by Pope Francis on October 3, 2020, was Fratelli Tutti on fraternity and social friendship, in a global context of uncertainty due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
Mr Guterres stresses the need to go back to the civilizational heritage that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights expresses:
Excellencies, we have an obligation to act – in deep and systemic ways. After all, the world is not moving incrementally. Technology is not moving incrementally. Climate destruction is not moving incrementally. We cannot move incrementally. This is not a time for tinkering. It is a time for transformation.
A transformation grounded in everything that guides our work – starting with the UN Charter [the foundational treaty signed on June 26, 1945] and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration – the distillation of our shared mission to uphold and uplift our common humanity.
It was bold, ambitious and audacious. We need to take inspiration from its spirit and its substance. The Declaration reminds us that the “inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace.” When I look at human rights in the broadest sense – with a 21st Century lens – I see a roadmap out of the dead end.
To work for peace is the first step because the shame of humanity is that "two billion people who live in countries affected by conflict and humanitarian crises".
Excellencies, if every country fulfilled its obligations under the Charter, the right to peace would be guaranteed. When countries break those pledges, they create a world of insecurity for everyone.
So it is time to transform our approach to peace by recommitting to the Charter -- putting human rights and dignity first, with prevention at the heart. That requires a holistic view of the peace continuum that identifies root causes and prevents the seeds of war from sprouting.
The nuclear threat has become real again with the war in Ukraine:
It is also time to bring disarmament and arms control back to the centre – reducing strategic threats from nuclear arms and working for their ultimate elimination.
Nuclear-armed countries must renounce the first use of these unconscionable weapons. In fact, they must renounce any use, anytime, anywhere. The so-called “tactical” use of nuclear weapons is an absurdity.
We are at the highest risk in decades of a nuclear war that could start by accident or design. We need to end the threat posed by 13,000 nuclear weapons held in arsenals around the world.
At the same time, no Agenda for Peace can ignore the dangers posed by new technologies. It should include such measures as international bans on cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure, and internationally agreed limits on lethal autonomous weapons systems. Human agency must be preserved at all costs.
The world's financial system shows how poor-sighted societies are through a lack of moral vision:
Let’s be clear.
When we see poverty and hunger on the rise around the world….
When developing countries are forced to pay five times more in borrowing costs than advanced economies …
When vulnerable middle-income countries are denied concessional funding and debt relief…
When the richest 1 percent have captured almost half of all new wealth over the past decade…
When people are hired and fired at will, but lack any form of social protection…
When we see all these gaping flaws and more…
Something is fundamentally wrong with our economic and financial system.
He continues:
The global financial architecture is at the heart of the problem. It should be the means through which globalization benefits all. Yet it is failing. The global financial architecture does not need a simple evolution; it needs a radical transformation.
It is time for a [...] new commitment to place the dramatic needs of developing countries at the centre of every decision and mechanism of the global financial system.
A new resolve to address the appalling inequalities and injustices laid bare once again by the pandemic and the response.
A new determination to ensure developing countries have a far greater voice in global financial institutions.
And a new debt architecture that encompasses debt relief and restructuring to vulnerable countries, including middle-income ones in need [...].
Without fundamental reforms, the richest countries and individuals will continue to pile up wealth, leaving crumbs for the communities and countries of the Global South.
Mr Guterres' desperation over the world's ignoring the threats to human survival is clear when he points to "fossil fuel producers and their enablers scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits", this in a week when leading oil companies have reported record profits and a reluctance to forge ahead with renewable sources of energy. It is for that kind of reason, he says:
We must end the merciless, relentless, and senseless war on nature. It is putting our world at immediate risk of hurtling past the 1.5-degree temperature increase limit and now still moving towards a deadly 2.8 degrees.
Meanwhile, humanity is taking a sledgehammer to our world’s rich biodiversity – with brutal and even irreversible consequences for people and planet. Our ocean is choked by pollution, plastics and chemicals. And vampiric overconsumption is draining the lifeblood of our planet – water.
This is the year of reckoning: "No more excuses. No more greenwashing. No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers." The suggested immorality of the greed of managers and investors is coupled in Mr Guterres' plea with his call for the end to deceitful clean and green claims with regards products but also the heralding of what in reality are "fake carbon credits".
Respect for each other is a further moral quality that Mr Guterres deems necessary to draw to our attention. He calls on "Governments, regulators, policymakers, technology companies, the media, civil society", with the last including individuals. Our moral obligation, personal as well as civic, is this:
Stop the hate. Set up strong guardrails. Be accountable [...].
All this is familiar territory for those imbued with an understanding of the history of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where Judeo-Christian concepts of how God-given dignity of each person demands respect for their rights and freedom were carried into those documents that were meant to lay the foundation for the world society after two horrific world wars and where communism loomed as a dark cloud over eastern Europe.
In his 2015 letter Laudato Si' Pope Francis writes:
Sobriety and humility were not favourably regarded in the last century. And yet, when there is a general breakdown in the exercise of a certain virtue in personal and social life, it ends up causing a number of imbalances, including environmental ones. [...]
Once we lose our humility and become enthralled with the possibility of limitless mastery over everything, we inevitably end up harming society and the environment.
It is not easy to promote this kind of healthy humility or happy sobriety when we consider ourselves autonomous, when we exclude god from our lives or replace him with our own ego, and think that our subjective feelings can define what is right and what is wrong.
A humble attitude toward other people and our common home, an attitude arising from the knowledge of the evil in our own heart, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn pointed out, is expressed powerfully in a prayer Francis offers at the end of his letter:
A prayer for our earth
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour upon us the power of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.
Fill us with peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor,
help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,
so precious in your eyes.
Bring healing to our lives, that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.
Touch the hearts
of those who look only for gain
at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognise that we are profoundly united with every creature
as we journey toward your infinite light.
We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle for justice, love and peace.
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