President Baerbock, Secretary-General Guterres, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen,
We live in an accelerated and complex historical phase, rich with opportunities but also—perhaps above all—fraught with dangers. Suspended between war and peace.
According to the Global Peace Index 2024, there are currently 56 armed conflicts—the highest number since the Second World War.
We therefore live in a world profoundly different from the one in which the United Nations was born, when in 1945, 51 Nations—today almost the entirety—decided to join forces to establish an international organisation whose primary purpose was to prevent war.
The question we must ask ourselves, eighty years later, as we look around, is: have we succeeded? You all know the answer, because it is in the daily news, and it isn’t very sympathetic.
Peace, dialogue, and diplomacy can no longer persuade or prevail. The use of force prevails on too many occasions. And the scenario before us is the one Pope Francis described with rare effectiveness: a “third world war” fought “piecemeal.”
Of course, among the main ongoing conflicts, there is 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 Kyiv. And I believe we have not reflected enough on the consequences of that choice and on one point that 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 intent to annex its territory. And still today, it shows no genuine willingness to accept any invitation to sit at the peace table.
This deep wound inflicted on international law, as was foreseeable, has unleashed destabilising effects far beyond the borders in which that war is being fought. The conflict in Ukraine has reignited—and detonated—several other crisis hotspots. While the United Nations has become even more disunited.
It is no coincidence that Hamas took advantage of this weakening of the architecture to launch—on October 7, 2023—its attack against Israel. The ferocity and brutality of that attack—the hunt for defenceless civilians—prompted Israel to respond, at first legitimately. Because every State and every person has the right to defend themselves, the reaction to an aggression must always respect the principle of proportionality. This applies to individuals, and even more so to States. And Israel has crossed that line, with a large-scale war that is disproportionately involving the Palestinian civilian population. And it is on this line that the Jewish State has ended up breaking humanitarian law, causing a massacre among civilians.
A choice that Italy has repeatedly defined as unacceptable, and which will lead to our vote in favour of some of the sanctions proposed by the European Commission against Israel.
However, we do not line up with those who place all the responsibility for what is happening in Gaza on Israel. Because it was Hamas that started the war, it is Hamas that could end the suffering of Palestinians by immediately releasing all the hostages. It is Hamas that seems to want to thrive on the suffering of the very 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 innocents, and for the universal values of the free world of which it is part.
And to end a war, concrete solutions are needed. Because peace is not built only with appeals or ideological proclamations embraced by those who do not want peace.
Peace is built with patience, with courage, with reason.
The children of Gaza—as those Italy is proudly hosting and treating in our hospitals—demand answers that can improve their condition, and on this we are committed. Italy is, and will be, present for anyone willing to work on a serious plan for the release of hostages, a permanent ceasefire, the exclusion of Hamas from any role in Palestinian governance, the gradual withdrawal of Israel from Gaza, and the engagement of the international community in managing the phase following the ceasefire, up to the realization of the two-State perspective.
In this sense, we consider the proposals that the President of the United States has just discussed with Arab countries very interesting, and we are, of course, ready to help.
We believe Israel has no right to prevent the creation of a Palestinian State tomorrow, nor to build new settlements in the West Bank to block it. That is why we signed the New York Declaration on the two-state solution. It is Italy’s historic position on the Palestinian issue—a position that has never changed.
At the same time, we believe that the recognition of Palestine must rest on two non-negotiable preconditions: the release of all Israeli hostages and Hamas’s renunciation of any role in the governance of Palestine, because those who started the conflict cannot be rewarded.
And so we return to the starting point: the rules—the force of law. In Ukraine, in the Middle East, in every scenario where war prevails and reason seems lost.
We cannot escape, colleagues, the most crucial question—the reason we are all gathered here today: is the architecture of the United Nations that we built 80 years ago equal to the challenges of our age?
It is not. And multilateralism, dialogue, and diplomacy, without institutions that function as they should, are only empty words. We must acknowledge our limits. We must admit that a profound reform of the United Nations is necessary—and urgent. A reform that is not ideological, but pragmatic and realistic.
That respects the sovereignty of Nations and opens the way to shared solutions.
We need an institution that is agile, efficient, and capable of responding quickly to crises. Transparent in its mission, transparent in its costs. Able to minimise bureaucracy, waste, and duplication.
The Glass Palace must also be a House of Glass.
The reform Italy has in mind, starting with the Security Council, must respect the principles of equality, democracy, representativeness, and responsibility. We do not need new hierarchies and we do not need 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 prejudice, also based on the proposals already advanced by the Uniting for Consensus Group. Still, we want a reform that better represents everyone, not one that means more for some.
And to be effective, it is not only institutions that we must reform. Because we are facing a change of era, which requires a profound revision of all the tools we have to regulate relations between Nations and defend people’s rights, including International Conventions.
I am thinking, for example, of the conventions that regulate migration and asylum. Rules drafted in an era when mass irregular migration did not exist, and human traffickers did not exist. Conventions are no longer adequate in this context, which, when interpreted ideologically and unilaterally by politicised judiciaries, end up trampling on the law instead of upholding it.
Together with other European States, we have raised this issue, and we intend to pursue it. Not, of course, to lower the level of guarantees, but to build a system fit for our times, capable of protecting fundamental human rights together with the sacrosanct prerogative of every Nation to protect its citizens and its borders, to exercise its sovereignty, to govern migration, which impacts people, especially the most vulnerable.
The international community must unite in fighting human trafficking. The United Nations, like other international institutions such as the European Union, cannot turn away or end up protecting criminals in the name of alleged 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 around the world—primarily Christians—persecuted and 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 trying to do its part also here, above all with its Mattei Plan for Africa. In the past three years, we have launched our cooperation plan with Africa and extended its reach to fourteen Nations.
We have built partnerships with the United Nations, the European Union and its Global Gateway, the G7, the African Union and the African Development Bank, international financial institutions, and many bilateral partners—I think of the United Arab Emirates, whom I wish to thank.
This complementarity granted us the honour, last July, of co-organising with Ethiopia the Third UN Food Systems Summit; the responsibility of being actively involved in the major infrastructure project of the Lobito Corridor between Angola and Zambia; and the opportunity to build public-private partnerships that attract investment and deliver tangible results.
As is happening in Algeria, we will recover more than 36,000 hectares of desert to bring them under cultivation, benefiting over 600,000 people, as is happening with the launch of the AI Hub for Sustainable Development, which will involve hundreds of African start-ups in developing artificial intelligence. And as is happening with the extension to East Africa of the Blue Raman Cable, to connect India with European economies, passing through the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
Unlike other actors, we have no hidden agenda in Africa. We are not interested in exploiting the Continent for its rich raw materials. We are curious, instead, about Africa prospering by processing its own resources, giving jobs and perspective to its best energies, and relying on stable governments, dynamic societies, and safe environments.
But this path cannot ignore a matter that can no longer be postponed: the debt of African Nations.
Italy plans to convert, over the next 10 years, the entire debt stock of the least economically developed Nations—according to World Bank criteria—and to cut by 50% that of lower-middle-income Nations. The operation, over 10 years, will allow us to convert into development projects, implemented locally, more than 235 million euros of debt.
It is an initiative to which the Italian Government—during the Jubilee year—attaches particular importance, and which we hope can serve as an example also for other Nations, because this is not only an economic issue but also one of justice, dignity, and future.
Dear colleagues, thirty years of dogmatic globalisation are over, its backlash was underestimated, and today we face “unexpected consequences”—which were not unexpected—of grave impact on citizens, families, and businesses. Not everything went well, as had been promised.
And let me give you more news: things could go much worse, if we do not stop the artificial creation of unsustainable production models, such as the “green plans” that in Europe—and across the West—are leading to deindustrialisation much earlier than decarbonization.
The reconversion of entire productive sectors based on theories that do not consider people’s needs—and economic means—was a mistake that causes suffering in the weakest social groups and pushes 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, undermined competitiveness, and drained knowledge. And most paradoxically, it has not improved the overall health of our planet.
Of course, this is not about denying climate change but about affirming reason—which above all means technological neutrality and gradual reform instead of ideological extremism. It is about protecting the environment while keeping humanity at the centre. Our systems took centuries to build, but only a few decades are enough to find ourselves in an industrial desert. Except, as I have often said, there is nothing green in the desert.
Colleagues, delegates, ladies and gentlemen,
this year we celebrate not only 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 upon us an even greater responsibility to remain faithful to the founding principles and values of this Organization.
With the awareness that, in order to do so, we must be able to make effective the instruments to defend those principles and values in our time, so that our action can be more incisive and truly responsive to the needs of our societies.
The choice before us is simple: to leave everything as it is, and take refuge in what is easy, or to show our citizens that we will not waste the historic opportunity—which this time, with its many challenges, has placed in our hands—to build a more just and safer world.
Because, as Saint Francis said—the most Italian of Saints, who gave his name to the city where this Organization was born—“difficult battles are reserved only for those with exemplary courage.” I believe the time has come to show that courage.
Thank you.
