United Nations Headquarters
New York, New York
11:08 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thanks.
Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-Common, my fellow leaders, within the final yr, our world has skilled nice upheaval: a rising disaster in meals insecurity; report warmth, floods, and droughts; COVID-19; inflation; and a brutal, unnecessary struggle — a struggle chosen by one man, to be very blunt.
Allow us to converse plainly. A everlasting member of the United Nations Safety Council invaded its neighbor, tried to erase a sovereign state from the map.
Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Constitution — no extra essential than the clear prohibition in opposition to nations taking the territory of their neighbor by drive.
Once more, simply as we speak, President Putin has made overt nuclear threats in opposition to Europe and a reckless disregard for the obligations of the non-proliferation regime.
Now Russia is looking — calling up extra troopers to hitch the battle. And the Kremlin is organizing a sham referenda to attempt to annex components of Ukraine, a particularly vital violation of the U.N. Constitution.
This world ought to see these outrageous acts for what they’re. Putin claims he needed to act as a result of Russia was threatened. However nobody threatened Russia, and nobody apart from Russia sought battle.
Actually, we warned it was coming. And with a lot of you, we labored to attempt to avert it.
Putin’s personal phrases make his true goal unmistakable. Simply earlier than he invaded, Putin asserted — and I quote — Ukraine was “created by Russia” and by no means had, quote, “actual statehood.”
And now we see assaults on faculties, railway stations, hospitals, wa- — on facilities of Ukrainian historical past and tradition.
Up to now, much more horrifying proof of Russia’s atrocity and struggle crimes: mass graves uncovered in Izyum; our bodies, in accordance to those who excavated these our bodies, displaying indicators of torture.
This struggle is about extinguishing Ukraine’s proper to exist as a state, plain and easy, and Ukraine’s proper to exist as a individuals. Whoever you’re, wherever you reside, no matter you consider, that ought to not — that ought to make your blood run chilly.
That’s why 141 nations within the Common Meeting got here collectively to unequivocally condemn Russia’s struggle in opposition to Ukraine. The US has marshaled huge ranges of safety help and humanitarian assist and direct financial help for Ukraine — greater than $25 billion to this point.
Our allies and companions world wide have stepped up as properly. And as we speak, greater than 40 nations represented in right here have contributed billions of their very own cash and tools to assist Ukraine defend itself.
The US can be working carefully with our allies and companions to impose prices on Russia, to discourage assaults in opposition to NATO territory, to carry Russia accountable for the atrocities and struggle crimes.
As a result of if nations can pursue their imperial ambitions with out penalties, then we put in danger all the pieces this very establishment stands for. All the things.
Each victory received on the battlefield belongs to the brave Ukrainian troopers. However this previous yr, the world was examined as properly, and we didn’t hesitate.
We selected liberty. We selected sovereignty. We selected rules to which each celebration to the United Nations Constitution is beholding. We stood with Ukraine.
Such as you, the USA desires this struggle to finish on simply phrases, on phrases all of us signed up for: that you simply can not seize a nation’s territory by drive. The one nation standing in the way in which of that’s Russia.
So, we — every of us on this physique who is decided to uphold the rules and beliefs we pledge to defend as members of the United Nations — have to be clear, agency, and unwavering in our resolve.
Ukraine has the identical rights that belong to each sovereign nation. We’ll stand in solidarity with Ukraine. We’ll stand in solidarity in opposition to Russia’s aggression. Interval.
Now, it’s no secret that within the contest between democracy and autocracy, the USA — and I, as President — champion a imaginative and prescient for our world that’s grounded within the values of democracy.
The US is decided to defend and strengthen democracy at house and world wide. As a result of I consider democracy stays humanity’s biggest instrument to deal with the challenges of our time.
We’re working with the G7 and likeminded nations to show democracies can ship for his or her residents but additionally ship for the remainder of the world as properly.
However as we meet as we speak, the U.N. Constitution — the U.N. Constitution’s very foundation of a steady and simply rule-based order is beneath assault by those that want to tear it down or distort it for their very own political benefit.
And the United Nations Constitution was not solely signed by democracies of the world, it was negotiated amongst residents of dozens of countries with vastly completely different histories and ideologies, united of their dedication to work for peace.
As President Truman stated in 1945, the U.N. Constitution — and I quote — is “proof that nations, like males, can state their variations, can face them, after which can discover frequent floor on which to face.” Finish of quote.
That frequent floor was so easy, so primary that, as we speak, 193 of you — 193 member states — have willingly embraced its rules. And standing up for these rules for the U.N. Constitution is the job of each accountable member state.
I reject using violence and struggle to beat nations or increase borders by way of bloodshed.
To face in opposition to world politics of concern and coercion; to defend the sovereign rights of smaller nations as equal to these of bigger ones; to embrace primary rules like freedom of navigation, respect for worldwide regulation, and arms management — it doesn’t matter what else we might disagree on, that’s the frequent floor upon which we should stand.
For those who’re nonetheless dedicated to a powerful basis for the great of each nation world wide, then the USA desires to work with you.
I additionally consider the time has come for this establishment to turn out to be extra inclusive in order that it could possibly higher reply to the wants of as we speak’s world.
Members of the U.N. Safety Council, together with the USA, ought to persistently uphold and defend the U.N. Constitution and chorus — chorus from using the veto, besides in uncommon, extraordinary conditions, to make sure that the Council stays credible and efficient.
That can be why the USA helps rising the variety of each everlasting and non-permanent representatives of the Council. This contains everlasting seats for these nations we’ve lengthy supported and everlasting seats for nations in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
The US is dedicated to this important work. In each area, we pursued new, constructive methods to work with companions to advance shared pursuits, from elevating the Quad within the Indo-Pacific; to signing the Los Angeles Declaration of Migration and Safety on the Summit of the Americas; to becoming a member of a historic assembly of 9 Arab leaders to work towards a extra peaceable, built-in Center East; to internet hosting the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit in — this December.
As I stated final yr, the USA is opening an period of relentless diplomacy to deal with the challenges that matter most to individuals’s lives — all individuals’s lives: tackling the local weather disaster, because the earlier spoker [sic] — speaker spoke to; strengthening world well being safety; feeding the world — feeding the world.
We made that precedence. And one yr later, we’re preserving that promise.
From the day I got here to workplace, we’ve led with a daring local weather agenda. We rejoined the Paris Settlement, convened main local weather summits, helped ship essential agreements on COP26. And we helped get two thirds of the world GDP on monitor to restrict warming to 1.5 levels Celsius.
And now I’ve signed a historic piece of laws right here in the USA that features the largest, most essential local weather dedication we have now ever made within the historical past of our nation: $369 billion towards local weather change. That features tens of billions in new investments in offshore wind and photo voltaic, doubling down on zero emission autos, rising vitality effectivity, supporting clear manufacturing.
Our Division of Vitality estimates that this new regulation will scale back U.S. emissions by one gigaton a yr by 2030 whereas unleashing a brand new period of clean-energy-powered financial development.
Our investments may also assist scale back the price of growing clear vitality applied sciences worldwide, not simply the USA. It is a world gamechanger — and none too quickly. We don’t have a lot time.
Everyone knows we’re already dwelling in a local weather disaster. Nobody appears to doubt it after this previous yr. We meet — we meet — a lot of Pas- — as we meet, a lot of Pakistan remains to be underwater; it wants assist. In the meantime, the Horn of Africa faces unprecedented drought.
Households are dealing with inconceivable selections, selecting which youngster to feed and questioning whether or not they’ll survive.
That is the human price of local weather change. And it’s rising, not lessening.
So, as I introduced final yr, to satisfy our world duty, my administration is working with our Congress to ship greater than $11 billion a yr to worldwide local weather finance to assist lower-income nations implement their local weather targets and guarantee a simply vitality transition.
The important thing a part of that can be our PEPFAR [PREPARE] plan, which can assist half a billion individuals, and particularly weak nations, adapt to the impacts of local weather change and construct resilience.
This want is gigantic. So let this be the second we discover inside ourselves the desire to show again the tide of local weather demastation [sic] — devastation and unlock a resilient, sustainable, clear vitality financial system to protect our planet.
On world well being, we’ve delivered greater than 620 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to 116 nations world wide, with extra obtainable to assist meet nations’ wants — all freed from cost, no strings connected.
And we’re working carefully with the G20 and different nations. And the USA helped lead the change to determine a groundbreaking new Fund for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response on the World Financial institution.
On the similar time, we’ve continued to advance the ball on enduring world well being challenges.
Later as we speak, I’ll host the Seventh Replenishment Convention for the International Fund to Battle AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. With bipartisan help in our Congress, I’ve pledged to contribute as much as $6 billion to that effort.
So I stay up for welcoming a historic spherical of pledges on the convention leading to one of many largest world well being fundraisers ever held in all of historical past.
We’re additionally taking up the meals disaster head on. With as many as 193 million individuals world wide experiencing acute — acute meals insecurity — a bounce of 40 million in a yr — as we speak I’m asserting one other $2.9 billion in U.S. help for lifesaving humanitarian and meals safety help for this yr alone.
Russia, within the meantime, is pumping out lies, making an attempt to pin the blame for the disaster — the meals disaster — onto sanctions imposed by many on the earth for the aggression in opposition to Ukraine.
So let me be completely clear about one thing: Our sanctions explicitly permit — explicitly permit Russia the flexibility to export meals and fertilizer. No limitation. It’s Russia’s struggle that’s worsening meals insecurity, and solely Russia can finish it.
I’m grateful for the work right here on the U.N. — together with your management, Mr. Secretary-Common — establishing a mechanism to export grain from Black Sea ports in Ukraine that Russia had blocked for months, and we want to verify it’s prolonged.
We consider strongly in the necessity to feed the world. That’s why the USA is the world’s largest supporter of the World Meals Programme, with greater than 40 % of its price range.
We’re main help — we’re main help of the UNICEF efforts to feed kids world wide.
And to tackle the bigger problem of meals insecurity, the USA launched a Name to Motion: a roadmap eliminating world meals insecurity — to eliminating world meals insecurity that greater than 100 nation member states have already supported.
In June, the G7 introduced greater than $4.5 billion to strengthen meals safety world wide.
Via USAID’s Feed the Future initiative, the USA is scaling up modern methods to get drought- and heat-resistant seeds into the fingers of farmers who want them, whereas distributing fertilizer and bettering fertilizer effectivity in order that farmers can develop extra whereas utilizing much less.
And we’re calling on all nations to chorus from banning meals exports or hoarding grain whereas so many individuals are struggling. As a result of in each nation on the earth, it doesn’t matter what else divides us, if mother and father can not feed their kids, nothing — nothing else issues if mother and father can not feed their kids.
As we glance to the longer term, we’re working with our companions to replace and create guidelines of the street for brand spanking new challenges we face within the twenty first century.
We launched the Commerce and Expertise Council with the European Union to make sure that key applied sciences — key applied sciences are developed and ruled in the way in which that advantages everybody.
With our accomplice nations and thru the U.N., we’re supporting and strengthening the norms of duty — accountable state conduct in our on-line world and dealing to carry accountable those that use cyberattacks to threaten worldwide peace and safety.
With companions within the Americas, Africa, Europe, and the Center East, and the Indo-Pacific, we’re working to construct a brand new financial ecosystem whereas — the place each nation — each nation will get a good shot and financial development is resilient, sustainable, and shared.
That’s why the USA has championed a world minimal tax. And we’ll work to see it applied so main firms pay their fair proportion in every single place — in every single place.
It’s additionally been the thought behind the Indo-Pacific Financial Framework, which the USA launched this yr with 13 different Indo-Pacific economies. We’re working with our companions in ASEAN and the Pacific Islands to help a imaginative and prescient for a essential Indo-Pacific area that’s free and open, linked and affluent, safe and resilient.
Along with companions world wide, we’re working to ser- — safe resilient provide chains that defend everybody from coercion or domination and be certain that no nation can use vitality as a weapon.
And as Russia’s struggle rolls [sic] — riles the worldwide financial system, we’re additionally calling on main world collectors, together with the non-Paris Membership nations, to transparently negotiate debt forgiveness for lower-income nations to forestall broader financial and political crises world wide.
As a substitute of infrastructure initiatives that generate large and enormous debt with out delivering on the promised benefits, let’s meet the big infrastructure wants world wide with clear investments — high-standard initiatives that defend the rights of employees and the setting — keyed to the wants of the communities they serve, to not the contributor.
That’s why the USA, along with fellow G7 companions, launched a Partnership for International Infrastructure and Funding. We intend to collectively mobilize $600 billion
in funding by way of this partnership by 2027.
Dozens of initiatives are already underway: industrial-scale vaccine manufacturing in Senegal, transformative photo voltaic initiatives in Angola, first-of-its-kind small modular nuclear energy plant in Romania.
These are investments which are going to ship returns not only for these nations, however for everybody. The US will work with each nation, together with our opponents, to resolve world issues like local weather change. Local weather diplomacy will not be a favor to the USA or another nation, and strolling away hurts all the world.
Let me be direct concerning the competitors between the USA and China. As we handle shifting geopolitical traits, the USA will conduct itself as an inexpensive chief. We don’t search battle. We don’t search a Chilly Warfare. We don’t ask any nation to decide on between the USA or another accomplice.
However the USA can be unabashed in selling our imaginative and prescient of a free, open, safe, and affluent world and what we have now to supply communities of countries: investments which are designed to not foster dependency, however to alleviate burdens and assist nations turn out to be self-sufficient; partnerships to not create political obligation, however as a result of we all know our personal success — every of our success is elevated when different nations succeed as properly.
When people have the possibility to reside in dignity and develop their abilities, everybody advantages. Crucial to that’s dwelling as much as the very best targets of this establishment: rising peace and safety for everybody, in every single place.
The US won’t waver in our unrelenting willpower to counter and thwart the persevering with terrorist threats to our world. And we’ll lead with our diplomacy to try for peaceable decision of conflicts.
We search to uphold peace and stability throughout the Taiwan Straits.
We stay dedicated to our One China coverage, which has helped stop battle for 4 many years. And we proceed to oppose unilateral modifications in the established order by both aspect.
We help an African Union-led peace course of to finish the battle in Ethiopia and restore safety for all its individuals.
In Venezuela, the place years of the political oppression have pushed greater than 6 million individuals from that nation, we urge a Venezuelan-led dialogue and a return to free and honest elections.
We proceed to face with our neighbor in Haiti because it faces political-fueled gang violence and an unlimited human disaster.
And we name on the world to do the identical. We’ve extra to do.
We’ll proceed to again the U.N.-mediated truce in Yemen, which has delivered valuable months of peace to folks that have suffered years of struggle.
And we’ll proceed to advocate for lasting negotiating peace between the Jewish and democratic state of Israel and the Palestinian individuals. The US is dedicated to Israel’s safety, full cease. And a negotiated two-state resolution stays, in our view, one of the simplest ways to make sure Israel’s safety and prosperity for the longer term and provides the Palestinians the state which — to which they’re entitled — each side to completely respect the equal rights of their residents; each individuals having fun with equal measure of freedom and dignity.
Let me additionally urge each nation to recommit to strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime by way of diplomacy. It doesn’t matter what else is occurring on the earth, the USA is able to pursue essential arms management measures. A nuclear struggle can’t be received and must not ever be fought.
The 5 everlasting members of the Safety Council simply reaffirmed that dedication in January. However as we speak, we’re seeing disturbing traits. Russia shunned the Non-Proliferati- — -Proliferation beliefs embraced by each different nation on the tenth NPT Overview Convention.
And once more, as we speak, as I stated, they’re making irresponsible nuclear threats to make use of nuclear weapons. China is conducting an unprecedented, regarding nuclear buildup with none transparency.
Regardless of our efforts to start severe and sustained diplomacy, the Democratic Folks’s Republic of Korea continues to blatantly violate U.N. sanctions.
And whereas the USA is ready for a mutual return to the Joint Complete Plan of Motion if Iran steps as much as its obligations, the USA is evident: We won’t permit Iran to amass a nuclear weapon.
I proceed to consider that diplomacy is one of the simplest ways to realize this final result. The nonproliferation regime is among the biggest successes of this establishment. We can not let the world now slide backwards, nor can we flip a blind eye to the erosion of human rights.
Maybe singular amongst this physique’s achievements stands the Common Declaration of Human Rights, which is the usual by which our forebears challenged us to measure ourselves.
They made clear in 1948: Human rights are the premise for all that we search to realize. And but as we speak, in 2022, basic freedoms are in danger in each a part of our world, from the violations of — in Xinjiang detailed in current experiences by the Workplace of U.N. — U.S. — experiences detailing by the U.S. [U.N.] Excessive Commissioner, to the horrible abuses in opposition to pro-democracy activists and ethnic minorities by the army regime in Burma, to the elevated repression of girls and ladies by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
And as we speak, we stand with the courageous residents and the courageous ladies of Iran who proper now are demonstrating to safe their primary rights.
However right here’s what I do know: The longer term can be received by these nations that unleash the complete potential of their populations, the place ladies and ladies can train equal rights, together with primary reproductive rights, and contribute totally to constructing a stronger economies and extra resilient societies; the place non secular and ethnic minorities can reside their lives with out harassment and contribute to the material of their communities; the place the LGBTQ+ group people reside and love freely with out being focused with violence; the place residents can query and criticize their leaders with out concern of reprisal.
The US will at all times promote human rights and the values enshrined within the U.N. Constitution in our personal nation and world wide.
Let me finish with this: This establishment, guided by the U.N. Constitution and the Common Declaration of Human Rights, is at its core an act of dauntless hope.
Let me say that once more: It’s an act of dauntless hope.
Take into consideration the imaginative and prescient of these first delegates who undertook a seemingly inconceivable activity whereas the world was nonetheless smoldering.
Take into consideration how divided the individuals of the world will need to have felt with the recent grief of hundreds of thousands lifeless, the genocidal horrors of the Holocaust uncovered.
They’d each proper to consider solely the worst of humanity. As a substitute, they reached for what was greatest in all of us, they usually strove to construct one thing higher: enduring peace; comity amongst nations; equal rights for each member of the human household; cooperation for the development of all humankind.
My fellow leaders, the challenges we face as we speak are nice certainly, however our capability is larger. Our dedication have to be higher nonetheless.
So let’s stand collectively to once more declare the unmistakable resolve that nations of the world are united nonetheless, that we stand for the values of the U.N. Constitution, that we nonetheless consider by working collectively we will bend the arc of historical past towards a freer and extra simply world for all our kids, though none of us have totally achieved it.
We’re not passive witnesses to historical past; we’re the authors of historical past.
We are able to do that — we have now to do it — for ourselves and for our future, for humankind.
Thanks in your tolerance, for listening to me. I recognize it very a lot. God bless you all. (Applause.)
11:37 A.M. EDT
