Remarks by Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxim Ryzhenkov at the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly
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00:00Mr. President, distinguished delegates, colleagues, for 79 years now, our countries have met in
00:17this chamber in order to speak their own truth, to exchange best practices, and to support
00:23important initiatives.
00:24And we do this with the motto of making the world a better place.
00:29But is the world becoming a better place?
00:31Is it more predictable, safer?
00:34Is it more stable?
00:35There are some veterans in the room who probably remember the time when the UN did have a special
00:42role to play.
00:43Us less seasoned participants only heard about this or read about this in textbooks.
00:49Back then, many years ago, the UN Chamber or the UN Charter was something unshakable,
00:54a true guarantor of compromise, forward-looking solutions.
00:59We remember the horrors of World War II.
01:02No one wants a repetition of that tragedy.
01:04That's why we created a singular instrument for collective dispute settlement and for
01:08strengthening the architecture of international cooperation.
01:11Indeed, history has shown us that the instrument we came up with is not perfect, just like
01:16we're not perfect.
01:17But without a doubt, it's the best we have, and the best we had back then, the best we
01:22have now.
01:23Not all issues which were decided on equivocally were implemented, and blood continues to spill
01:31as a result.
01:32For instance, Palestine.
01:34What's unfolded there is a truly – a true humanitarian catastrophe, and tens of thousands
01:40of civilians continue to die.
01:42But this does not diminish the achievements of the past century.
01:46We shattered the colonial system.
01:47Many people finally got the right to develop themselves, and new hubs – economic, industrial,
01:55and financial – appeared across all continents.
01:57Entire regions came out of the shadows of hunger and epidemics.
02:01The UN's peacekeeping activities helped to prevent bloody conflicts or to put an end
02:07to them.
02:08UN Blue could be seen everywhere where development problems were being resolved.
02:13But what's happening now?
02:15Why did we have to establish a group of friends in defense of the UN Charter?
02:20Why today are we compelled to defend this document, the Charter, which should be of
02:28overriding legal importance for all of us?
02:31Why can we not use the entire UN toolkit to put the world in order?
02:36The answer is patently obvious, because a number of countries do not abide by the norms
02:41enshrined in the Charter, nor do they want to.
02:43Because for them, abiding by international law is equivalent to slowly being extinguished.
02:49Of course, when they speak from this rostrum, they do recall the Charter, but not universally
02:53so, but only to serve their egotistical interests and claims.
02:56And often they claim that others are flouting the Charter.
03:00Let me remind you, the UN law is universal.
03:03It gives everyone equal rights to develop, and the rights to various benefits and technologies
03:09and resources on a non-discriminatory basis.
03:12Is this approach acceptable to the West?
03:13Clearly, no.
03:14What they're interested in is maintaining their dominance and the prosperity of their
03:19elites.
03:21In order to achieve this, they're exploiting entire nations and the resources of others,
03:26holding the rest of the world back.
03:28They're employing that principle, which is as old as the world itself, divide and conquer.
03:36It's one of the roots of many of modernity's conflicts.
03:41All of the UN's principles are being put at the bottom of the pile in the interests
03:48of the vital interests of the US and their closest satellites.
03:52But if a state dares to enact their own policy to protect their people, if they try to throw
03:57off the yoke of external control over their resources, the West all of a sudden remembers
04:01all of these conventions, these paragraphs, and even the tiniest references at the bottom
04:05of them.
04:06And what's most important, anyone who disagrees with the West will be subjected to illegal
04:10sanctions and pressure.
04:13This is what's behind all of the so-called color revolutions.
04:17They resulted in suffering and upheaval for ordinary people.
04:19That's the way of the West.
04:21That's their recipe for a new world.
04:23And this recipe is generously seasoned with NATO weapons.
04:27Just think about it.
04:28Today, roughly 40 countries with a population of 2.5 billion are under illegal unilateral
04:34restrictive measures imposed by the US and the EU.
04:37And many people have been living under such conditions for decades.
04:41Whereas peace-loving Cuba has been in this situation for over half a century.
04:45This instrument is one that flagrantly violates entire sections of the UN Charter and international
04:52law.
04:53It scuppers sustainable development, undermines food and energy security, restricts access
04:57to world markets, and violates the rights to the freedom of movement.
05:01It also has a boomerang effect on the countries who impose these measures.
05:05We're seeing in neighboring EU countries, people complain about ever higher prices on
05:11food prices, energy prices, as well as concomitant social upheavals.
05:16What do we have as a result?
05:18From the point of view of the collective West, and here I have some information taken from
05:21US sources, 72% of the world's people live in what the West calls autocracies.
05:2950 years ago, this figure stood at 46%, again, according to their data.
05:36So has the West managed to force humanity to live according to their templates?
05:42Clearly, no.
05:43We see a clear trend.
05:46Free countries in the global South who do not accept sanctions will see others meddle
05:51in their domestic affairs, and so-called democratization will be foisted upon them.
05:56They want to develop on the basis of their own social traditions, their vision of the
06:01world, to protect their people.
06:03And today, we have a global majority within which new ideas and new projects are springing up.
06:09They're strictly peaceful.
06:11They're in the interests of the entire global community, and they do not seek to restrict
06:18anyone's interests.
06:19The Chinese initiative, the Belt and Road Initiative put forward by Xi Jinping, the
06:26Initiative on Global Security and Global Civilization, the Russian and Belarusian Initiative of Charter
06:32of Multipolarity and Diversity in the 21st Century, the Indian Voice of the Global South
06:41Initiative, and many others.
06:43All of these projects are geared toward establishing an entire, a unified international community
06:48in which the fate of all of the people of our planet is united, not just the fate of
06:53the golden billion.
06:55The planet united in all of its diversity, it enriches all of us.
06:59This is the way forward.
07:00This is the way chosen for the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, for our people.
07:04It's underpinned by respect, trust, sincerity, reliance, and responsibility.
07:09And in fact, when a new package of illegal sanctions was imposed on Belarus, we responded
07:14with openness and transparency, unilaterally waiving visas for EU citizens.
07:19Thousands of Europeans have used this right coming to Belarus, and they were not disappointed.
07:26If we placed more trust in the UN, most peace-loving initiatives would be born and would grow within
07:33the organization, not outside it.
07:35At the same time, the world would not be threatened by fragmentation into political and economic
07:40blocs.
07:41A few words about the conflict of potential of our planet.
07:44It might be somewhat unusual what I'm about to say.
07:46We're all used to third-rate series and YouTube videos.
07:51We're being taught to receive information in this simplistic way, forcing us to forget
07:56the truths which many humanists and great authors penned in the past.
08:02Therefore, I'd like to cite three Western authors, and I'd like to draw parallels with
08:11what's going on right now.
08:12A quote from Kings and Cabbages, O. Henry, the little opera-booth nations play at government
08:20and intrigue until someday a big silent gunboat glides into the offing and warns them not
08:26to.
08:27An American ship.
08:31Next example, Graham Greene, The Quiet American, written not that long ago, a CIA undercover
08:40operative working as a staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam sought to enact terrorist
08:47acts so as to achieve a coup d'etat in that state, in Vietnam, and install a government
08:52loyal to the U.S.
08:53And last but not least, Kurt Vonnegut, roughly 50 years ago he wrote this, A Man Without
08:58a Country.
09:00He did not understand why the U.S. and the U.K. at the very end of World War II, when
09:04everything was already over, why they had to carpet bomb Dresden, raising it to the
09:10ground and burying in the rubble, under the rubble, roughly, in fact, several hundred
09:16thousand people, children, women, and the elderly.
09:20We know why they did this, to make them fear the future.
09:24And this is very similar to what we're seeing these days, meddling provocations, however,
09:30we now see real American warships, and not just one, but many.
09:35This is why we need a strong and impartial universal international organization which
09:38can guarantee that a balance is struck in our world, in which no one country or group
09:42of countries can do as it see fits, imposing its will on the U.N. to stoke its egotism
09:50at the expense of the global majority.
09:52A strong organization wouldn't allow transnational capital to benefit the collective West.
09:58It wouldn't allow for Ukraine to fight to the last Ukrainian.
10:03And if everyone, like Belarus today, understood what's actually happening in the conflict
10:08zone, what risks we're running, well, then we'd want to put an end to this bloody confrontation
10:15between these two brotherly nations.
10:17Long ago, Ukraine and Russia would be sitting around a negotiating table, not out on the
10:22battlefield.
10:23There are many timely initiatives, such as the Brazil-China peace plan.
10:28And yet without Russia's participation, they won't be successful.
10:31A new security architecture in our region is also impossible without Belarus's participation.
10:36NATO is bolstering military capabilities at our borders many times over.
10:43Tens of thousands of soldiers, thousands of units of military equipment, and we're seriously
10:48disquieted by the fact that these games might get out of control, resulting in the conflict
10:53spreading throughout the region and throughout the world, which would have catastrophic repercussions
10:58for us all.
10:59Europe has its share of nuclear weapons.
11:02Thus, escalating these tensions is a path straight to World War III.
11:06Ten years ago, in Minsk, fruitful agreements were penned so as to resolve the conflict
11:13in Ukraine.
11:14Today, we continue to propose our efforts as we understand Russians and Ukrainians best
11:21of all, and we're doing everything we can to achieve peace in long-suffering Ukraine.
11:26We're very much interested in this, more than anyone.
11:30And just for your general edification, since the start of the conflict, over 250,000 Ukrainians
11:36crossed the border into Belarus.
11:38Of the last few months, 12,000 to 15,000 a year have been entering Belarus.
11:43These are official figures.
11:45So we're seeing people running away from prosperous Europe.
11:54And in fact, these figures are much greater than the number of refugees who have gone
12:00to the EU across our border.
12:03Shameless efforts are being made to push migrants into Belarus.
12:10This is a dirty page in the book of European democracy.
12:14On our border with the EU, soldiers from certain EU countries are beating and torturing refugees
12:22from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East with impunities.
12:25Dozens have died.
12:26This has been reported by independent sources.
12:28Some have been buried without identification.
12:30In fact, the Council of Europe recently condemned such actions and criticized a new Polish law
12:35which broadens the legal scope for Polish soldiers using firearms against refugees.
12:42This is what so-called enlightened Europe is doing to welcome those fleeing the horrors
12:48which resulted from the policies of intervention of the collective West, intervention in the
12:53sovereign affairs of other countries.
12:56These actions are a flagrant violation of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees.
13:01All of the facts have been recorded and will be sent to the relevant bodies for investigation,
13:06although these bodies should have started investigating them of their own accord long
13:10ago.
13:11That's why we're concerned.
13:14We're concerned by how we see the path towards strengthening the UN.
13:17First, the UN should throw off the diktat of a number of states, states who are doing
13:23as they see fit, feeling themselves to be exceptional.
13:26The UN is all of us.
13:29Secretariat staff should remember that when they become secretariat staff, they should
13:32serve the interests of the organization as a whole, not of their fellow nationals.
13:36They should be objective, impartial, and independent.
13:39Second, the organization should support regional processes because regionalism is a key reality
13:44in today's times.
13:46We constantly see regional integration bodies going from strength to strength, and this
13:51across the world.
13:53We're seeing the global majority regional projects rising, BRICS, SCO, CIS, the Eurasian
14:02Economic Union, the African Union, ASEAN, many others.
14:06I talked about this earlier.
14:07The UN must align itself with these processes, helping them to interlock and develop.
14:13Third, last year, Western countries waged a dirty campaign to prevent Belarus being
14:18elected to serve on the Security Council.
14:24That's what we saw, that they fear our honest voice being represented on the Security Council.
14:30However, we'll continue speaking openly and directly about a whole host of global
14:34issues.
14:35We'll continue insisting that Security Council reform is enacted, that this reform is fair,
14:41because the voice of the global south on the Security Council, it's our voice.
14:46This is why we believe what's necessary is Security Council reform by including developing
14:52countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
14:54These countries are at the heart of global problems.
14:56They know better than anyone else how to resolve wars and conflicts in the developing world.
15:00Their weight in global affairs is much greater than it was 80 years ago as well.
15:05Fourth, the UN should adopt a principled stance regarding the unacceptability of unilateral
15:12measures.
15:13We can expect, we should expect the organization to take serious and objective measures to
15:18assess the negative impact of sanctions on sustainable development.
15:22What's more is the UN's work to counter illicit sanctions should be systematic.
15:30A principled objective assessment of all instances of their use needs to be given.
15:34Fifth, we need to use the UN as a platform for effectively resolving growing transboundary
15:39threats.
15:41Belarus has always been in favor of a collective approach to these global problems such as
15:44migration, pandemics, natural disasters, human trafficking, the list goes on.
15:50Outside this chamber, there is a counter which shows how much is being spent on arms in real
15:58time, trillions of dollars, and that's only the money that the UN knows about.
16:03We think the golden billion countries should use these trillions of dollars not to fuel
16:09yet more wars and conflicts, but to resolve vital problems.
16:13Many global problems would be resolved in a flash.
16:15The UN would get the resources to help development, which it currently lacks.
16:20It keeps saying that donors don't have the money, they're not giving the money.
16:24And at the same time, those who have self-styled themselves as hegemons will shoulder their
16:30responsibility to solve global problems.
16:34The UN should be the voice of states without this voice being diluted by non-government
16:40bodies.
16:41After all, member states are the ones taking decisions, they're the ones responsible for
16:45the destiny of millions of people on our planet, and are responsible for implementing all of
16:51their decisions.
16:52President, today is a special – this year is a special year for the Republic of Belarus.
16:57Recently we marked the 80th anniversary of our liberation from the Nazis.
17:02This marks the start of a new chapter in our history.
17:05We stand proud that we created a people-centered state where people are at the core of our
17:10national policies.
17:12Next year we'll mark the 80th anniversary of the United Nations.
17:15We'll do this together.
17:17How will the world approach this milestone?
17:20Will it be entangled in disagreements and conflicts?
17:23This is why the President of the Republic of Belarus, Mr. Lukashenko, put forward the
17:26initiative of a global dialogue on security, and it very much dovetails with the proposals
17:32put forward by many delegates from this rostrum today.
17:37We will continue knocking on the doors of peace and constructive action, the doors of
17:43security and development.
17:46Starting last year, we began holding an international conference on Eurasian security in Minsk,
17:52the goal being to consolidate political, economic, and other processes in greater Eurasia
17:56for the benefit of our states and people.
17:58This year it will be held on the 31st of October.
17:59We invite all of you to attend.
18:01We must breathe the spirit of San Francisco into the UN's lungs.
18:06After all, that is the spirit that gave life to our organization.
18:09We stand convinced that this is absolutely necessary right now.
18:13It's necessary to secure the interests of all people on our planet.
18:16I thank you for your kind attention.
18:22For more UN videos visit www.un.org