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The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters. President, distinguished delegates. These words stem from the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, written in one of Mussolini's prison cells in the 1930s. The monsters he refers to were the dark, political, social and ideological phenomena of his time. Gramsci describes the time of transition, of insecurity and the collapse of hegemonies. His worries were not unwarranted. His era ended with the largest catastrophe of them all the Second World War. Our United Nations was founded by leaders who had lived through two world wars, a devastating economic collapse and the rise of fascism and Nazism. They had experienced firsthand that all nations suffer in war and conflict, and when international cooperation fails. We too are living in turbulent times. Yet at the very moment when we need it most, our United Nations faces its most serious challenge. We see an erosion of respect for international law, a loss of confidence in the merits of cooperation, of financing, and of effectiveness. These are symptoms of the same disease, a growing belief that power matters more than principle. A growing temptation to seek national advantage at the expense of common rules. But history teaches us a simple lesson. When rules are undermined, instability grows. When cooperation weakens, instability spreads. Smaller countries like my own, and in fact, the vast majority of this assembly are particularly dependent on common international rules.
Our enemies expected us to collapse. Well, we didn't collapse. Instead, we rose and fought like lions. For the past three years, our heroic soldiers have fought day in and day out in a seven front war. Do you know any other country the size of New Jersey capable of fighting a seven front war? And for three years, seven fronts Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, militias in Iraq, militias in Syria, Palestinian terrorists in Judea Samaria. They all ganged up on us to wipe us off the face of the earth. They failed because instead of collapsing, we delivered crippling blows to all of them. With our great American friends, we crushed Iran's army, navy, air force, and nuclear facilities. Israel hammered Hamas, we pummeled Hezbollah. You remember the beepers? Remember these things. Remember them? Yeah. Well, I can tell you this. Hezbollah certainly remembers them. Guess what happened to the bulk of the Hezbollah's vast arsenal of 150,000 ballistic missiles and rockets, all aimed at our civilians. They're gone. Hezbollah's leaders dead, their spirit broken. The arch terrorists, the worst mass murderers on earth. Not only killing Israelis, killing Americans, killing Brits, killing citizens of hundreds, dozens of countries. Khamenei, death, Sinwar, Haniyeh, Nasrallah and thousands of other terrorists who sought to destroy us. They're all gone too. The remaining terrorists are desperately trying to regroup.
Mr. president, for decades, my small but great country was known for a reality that it seemed impossible to change. The scourge of violence was deeply entrenched in our society. An entire nation was resigned to being condemned to live with this reality. After decades of institutional indifference, in 2019, the El Salvadoran people opted for Nayib Bukele, our president, who is now known across the world, a young leader who dared to challenge something that an entire generation thought they were condemned to and strove to profoundly transform the reality of our country, regardless of the consequences or the criticisms he had received from the international community. El Salvador went from being the most violent country in the world, with a murder rate of 103 people per 100,000 inhabitants. We as a country in peace, had more deaths than a country at war. So we moved from 103 murders per 100,000 inhabitants to 1.3 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in just five years. Unimaginable. Just think about it. But we achieved that. Por eso. Thank you. So thanks to this, my country is now a benchmark for others who suffer from the same problem. The International Monetary Fund has said that improvements for security has strengthened trust in and the economic activity of my country. And it's estimated the El Salvadorian economy will grow by 4.5% in 2026. So this has skyrocketed. And this is driven by investment, private consumption, remittances, tourism and inward capital flows. However, it would be a mistake to boil all of this down to numbers, because behind each and every number, these numbers that we have got used to when we say millions, they're not just numbers, they're millions of faces, individual people, individuals. So in my country, that we're talking about a mother who no longer has to be scared about whether her children are coming home in the evening or not. A business owner who used to face so much anxiety that knew that their basket of mangoes that they had to sell, they had to sell them for more than $10. Because if they didn't sell them for more than $10, they wouldn't be able to pay their protection money and they'd get shot in the head. So now behind these figures, we have a business owner who's able to open their business without fear, somebody who's able to breathe easily and cross the city freely, and a child who's able to run around all of the streets of our country, streets and spaces that they weren't able to dream of going in before, and something more profound, even the fact is that we now have a society that has recovered hope, grounded in the ability to imagine a different future. This is what recovering security really means. It doesn't just mean reducing crime, it means giving freedom its rights, its rightful space back. And I'm talking about freedom for each and every one of our citizens and each and every person that visits our country. And when a society recovers its freedom to walk around, to work, to do business and to live and breathe without fear, a second transformation begins. That is the recovery of trust. And this explains why El Salvador is now a benchmark for countries that are seeking support and looking for answers to their own security challenges. And it's not that our journey can be copied and pasted mechanically because there's no universal formula. Each situation needs to be resolved according to each country's individual experience. However, there is a lesson that we believe can be a universal lesson, and that is that no nation should have to accept collapse and government impotence as their destiny, the destiny for their people. No country. El Salvador, no. El Salvador has not come to this assembly to say that we've resolved all of our problems. No, we still got a lot to do. That would be false. To claim that we've come to say something much more profound. With determination, we have demonstrated that a problem that seemed irreversible could be tackled and turned around, regardless of whatever problem it is. And I want to be clear in line with the vision of my president, Mr. Bukele, security is not the final destination.
None of that happened because the powerful suddenly found their conscience. It happened because the balance of power in the room was changed. That is the lesson of history. Change is not given. It is organized. It is not the small states who are dismantling the rules based order. Small countries cannot dismantle a rules based world, but we will be the first to be crushed beneath its collapse. Great powers can survive the end of the rules. Small states cannot. For us, a rules based world is our shield. The rules have not always been applied fairly. But the answer is not a world without rules. It is rules that bind the strong as firmly as the weak. An international order whose rules apply only to the weak is not order. It is a hierarchy. When the Bahamas defends multilateralism, we're not defending a bureaucracy. We're defending the only successful arrangement in which a nation of 400 000 people can stand at this position as the sovereign equal of a nation of a billion people. A world without rules is not a free world. It is Milos. Mr. president, I do not appeal to conscience. Small states have done that for decades. Today, I appeal to your interests. What is in your best interest? No wall is high enough to keep out rising, warming seas. No border strong enough to stop a pandemic. Narrow self-interest asks what you can take today. Enlightened self-interest asks what kind of world you will have to live in tomorrow. The international rules based order. It benefits all. They're not arbitrary, having been arrived at through lived experience. Every rule you break today is the rule you will need tomorrow. Every institution you starve is one you will want one day. Every small nation you abandon
And even more alarming sign is the collapse of the system of strategic stability. For the first time since the 1970s, there are no longer any legally binding limits on strategic arms between the major nuclear powers. There are no treaties, no verification mechanisms, and no predictability. Humanity is once again teetering on the brink of existence.
Mr. President, the current erosion of international peace and security carries an uncomfortable echo of the League of Nations final years. The League did not collapse for want of noble principles, but because member states abandoned those principles the moment they became inconvenient or constrained their power. I therefore cannot speak candidly about multilateralism while looking away from where it is tested most severely. I begin close to home. Haiti's crisis is our crisis. Haiti is the Caribbean. While there are grounds for hope in elections now scheduled for December, there is also grave concern over a spike in violence threatening that process. Belize echoes the call of the CARICOM Eminent Persons Group. The Gang Suppression Force must be urgently and fully deployed. A Haitian-led, Haitian-owned political transition deserves a security environment in which it can actually succeed. Belize stands with the people of Haiti and with CARICOM in asking for nothing less. Belize also stands with Cuba.
Too often the cycle is predictable. A disaster occurs, infrastructure is destroyed, and economic activity collapses. We then mobilise resources to rebuild what was lost, often through borrowing that substantially increases debt to rebuild what we could have made more resilient from the outset. This is not an efficient financial model. The best time to build resilience is before disaster. The best time to finance transformation is before crisis, and the value of resilience should be measured not only by what we build, but by what we prevent from being destroyed. Mr. president, Dominica does not come to the United Nations asking to be treated as a victim of vulnerability. We come asking to be recognised as a partner in transformation. We must finance potential, not merely manage vulnerability. And this is not only about Dominica, it is about whether the global financial system is capable of recognizing a different development model, a model in which resilience is an investment. Nature is an asset, connectivity is productive infrastructure. Clean energy is economic opportunity, and prevention is financially smarter than reconstruction. That is the proposition we placed before this assembly. It is time that the international financial architecture evolves. Dominica joins its voice with those countries that continue to advocate for the use of multidimensional vulnerability as a practical and fair basis in determining access to development finance. We call for greater and easier access to concessional financing and grants for adaptation. We call for stronger disaster clauses in sovereign debt instruments. We call for financing mechanisms that can be activated rapidly when disasters strike. And we call for a fundamental shift in the way the international community views investment in resilience. Every dollar spent preventing the destruction of a road, a hospital, a school, or a water system is an investment in future development. Dominica is prepared to serve as a demonstration country for this approach. We are prepared to work with international partners to show what happens when finance is designed around transformation, rather than vulnerability. Mr. president, Dominica has long spoken of becoming the world's first climate resilient nation. Today I wish to take that ambition further.
Just as managing transformation is not an option up for debate. Together they constitute the very essence of the mission. We pledged before our people, before our Arab brothers, and before the entire world. On the day I was entrusted with leading the government of Lebanon, we assumed this responsibility at a time when our country faced three existential challenges. The first was to regain the trust of its people. After the financial collapse and the Beirut port explosion and the tragedies and wounds they left behind. The second was to reclaim its national decision making so that no authority stands above that of the state. No weapons exist outside its armed forces, and no decision on war and peace is taken outside its constitutional institutions. The third was to recover all of its territory from Israeli occupation, and to extend its sovereignty over the entirety of its national soil through its own forces. In implementation of the Taif Agreement and in sincere respect for the relevant international resolutions on Lebanon. Foremost among these is resolution 1701, which remains to this day a fundamental point of reference governing relations between Lebanon and Israel. Trust rebuilt decision making. Reclaimed. Land liberated. That is the equation for Lebanon's recovery. These are not three separate challenges. They are three facets of a single cause. Restoring a state that its citizens trust that is master of its own decisions, and that exercises sovereignty over the whole of its territory. Mr. president, first, the trust we seek to restore is not trust in words. It is trust in institutions that protect rights in a judiciary that guarantees justice, in an economy that restores prosperity to the people and gives young people the opportunity of a better future. We cannot speak of restoring trust without recalling the Beirut port explosion. The wound of the 4th of August remains open. It cannot heal without truth, justice and accountability, and these will inevitably come. Some may feel that our government has not yet fulfilled all of its commitments. We do not claim that the task is complete, but fairness demands that we not overlook the scale of legacy we inherited paralysed institutions, a public administration of diminished effectiveness, an economy stripped of the foundations of growth, and a state weakened by compounding crises and by decades of external interference. Even though we have not used the difficulty of our circumstances as a pretext to retreat from our commitments and we will not retreat. Lebanon has launched reforms on several fronts, namely revitalizing the public administration, strengthening the independence of the judiciary, modernizing the media law and abolishing the death penalty. It is also advancing towards the completion of financial reforms aimed at restoring order to the financial system and recovering depositors funds. These reforms should pave the way for an agreement with the IMF. Such an agreement is an indispensable tool for restoring international confidence in Lebanon, and a gateway to securing the financing needed from all our regional and international partners for economic recovery and reconstruction. Our aim in pursuing reform is not to ask our people to renew their trust in the state. Rather, through reform, we seek to rebuild a state worthy of its people's trust.
After years of political division and polarization that have drained the state and society, Libya no longer needs more crisis management, but rather the will to end the crisis. Our goal is clear: a unified sovereign state whose institutions derive their legitimacy from the will of its people. The path to that goal is a return to the people through constitutional and legal mechanisms, referendums, and free and fair elections. The people are the source of legitimacy, and it is they who can give institutions their unity and stability. Temporary deals cannot do so, nor can fragile settlements that collapse whenever the balance of power shifts or loyalties change. Here, we welcome the effort and intention of every state sincerely seeking to end the political and institutional division. We also appreciate the role entrusted to the United Nations support mission in Libya and its responsibility for facilitating the political process. Nevertheless, past experience obliges us to be clear. Any sustainable political process must not violate four governing principles. First, respect for legitimacy and for the constitutional and legal frameworks in force, without circumventing them or creating political arrangements outside established frameworks and procedures. Second, the principle of national ownership is a red line. International mediation must not turn into custodianship or into solutions crafted from abroad. The will of Libyans is the foundation, and the inclusion of all the different parties without exclusion or imposition is the true guarantee of the sustainability of any solution. Third, ensuring equal opportunities for all parties, as well as rejecting the use of force, influence, or fait accompli to impose predetermined political outcomes. Fourth, commitment to transparency in understandings and agreements. This requires defining the phases of implementation, their timelines, and the entities responsible for them. It also requires establishing clear mechanisms for oversight and accountability so as to ensure outcomes that are implementable, legally sound, and capable of producing legitimate and stable institutions. Experience has taught us that fragile settlements can begin to unravel as soon as the balance of power shifts or their outcomes emerge. Any arrangements that disregard national legal frameworks expose themselves to challenge and dispute. They reproduce the crisis rather than end it.
Across climate action, sea level rise and ocean governance, one reality remains: resilience has a cost. For decades, small island developing states have argued that income is not the same as resilience. Mr. President, per capita income cannot show exposure to hurricanes, droughts, pandemic shipping disruptions, energy shocks, conflict, or tourist collapse, nor how quickly one shock can erase years of investment. This year, Saint Kitts and Nevis stood before the United Nations and completed the Pilot Vulnerability and Resilience Country profile under the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index framework. And what did we learn? We learned what our grandparents always knew: a house can look strong from the road and still have rot in the rafters. Vulnerability is not a statistic. It is a roof that was destroyed in a hurricane Beryl. It is a school that became a shelter. It is a family rebuilding for the third time in a decade, because storms have no patience for GNI per capita. Mr. President, we are not asking that gross national income be discarded. We are asking that it stop being expected to tell a story it was never designed to tell. GNI can count our coconuts and our cruise ships. It cannot count our courage, and it cannot count the price we pay to simply remain. It cannot capture the cost of rebuilding the same bridge, clinic, or seawall again and again, while nations twice our size and half of our vulnerability borrowed cheaper than we do. We therefore call on the World Bank, the IMF, development banks, climate funds, and every partner here to incorporate MVI into the architecture of financing, not as charity but as arithmetic and justice made real.
We must champion timelines for decarbonization, but actually doing that in a forced or imposed way is a direct threat to food security, employment, and production. We must avoid industrial collapses, the breakdown of production, and avoid energy costs which people cannot afford. As such, energy security is vital if we are to ensure the survival of the international economy and to buttress development. There is no doubt whatsoever that Venezuela plays—and will play— a crucial role in these international efforts. Here, I wish to point to the recent agreement signed between the United States and Venezuela as one of the most all-encompassing and significant ever signed. It will contribute to ensuring the energy balance of the hemisphere and the well-being of our economy. Six, I now wish to refer to artificial intelligence. It is a genuine technological revolution.
It must be earned by consistent application. But the cost of failure is measured in more than lost trust. It is measured in children driven from their classrooms, children who go to sleep hungry, children who learn the sound of gunfire before they know the safety of peace. When collective security breaks down, schools close, hospitals collapse, families flee, and economies are consumed by war. Peace is not separate from development. It is its first condition. When the institutions entrusted with peace fail, it is too often the youngest who inherit the consequences. Excellencies, Africa exposes this contradiction most clearly. In 1945, most of our continent could not speak for itself at San Francisco because it remained under colonial rule. Only four African states were represented.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. Three years ago, some people predicted that Niger would collapse under the weight of sanctions and isolation. Today, Niger is standing tall. It is standing tall because its people has refused to bow down. It is standing tall because within the Confederation of Sahel states, it has found a family, solidarity and a family in the full African meaning of the term. It is standing tall because the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, a kindred and neighboring country, chose to support us with a substantial investment in the exploitation of our natural resources and through constant support for our defense system. With Algeria, we are also engaging in dynamic cooperation in the areas of health, education, energy, water and agriculture. On top of that, there are significant structural projects such as the tripartite gas pipeline and the trans-Saharan Road. Niger is above all standing tall because it has regained possession of its land, what lies beneath the land and of its voice. Mr. president, our country is also standing tall because it is speaking within our shared organisation, the UN and because among its members we count countries with which we have fruitful cooperation based on mutual respect. In this regard, allow me to say that Togo, Turkey, the Kingdom of Morocco, the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China are among our friends, true friends. On behalf of the president of the Republic, the Head of State I would like to express our gratitude to them. Mr. President. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, Niger remains faithful to the values included in its motto fraternity, work and progress, and to the values in the motto of our Confederation one space, one people, one destiny. The security, development and dignity of our peoples cannot be envisaged separately.
The catastrophic humanitarian conditions endured by the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip, as a result of continued casualties, displacement, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the collapse of the health care system require safe, urgent and sustained humanitarian access. It also requires allowing the UN and its specialized agencies to carry out their missions, especially the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Tunisia considers that any attempt to dismantle this long standing UN agency, or to undermine its mandate prior to a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, constitutes a desperate attempt to eliminate the right of return and to liquidate the Palestinian cause as a whole. The logic of force may be able to impose a bitter and inhumane reality for a period of time, but it can never break the will of peoples nor halt the course of history.
