Brazil’s President, by tradition, is the first head of state to address the United Nations General Assembly annual General Debate. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s address today expressed the outlook around which the majority of the world seeks to unite humanity today.
“Created at the end of the war, the UN symbolizes the highest expression of the aspiration for peace and prosperity. Today, however, the ideals that inspired its founders in San Francisco are under threat, as they have never been in its entire history,” he stated at the outset. We face “an international disorder marked by repeated concessions to power politics. Attacks on sovereignty, arbitrary sanctions and unilateral interventions are becoming the norm.”
Brazil itself is facing “unilateral and arbitrary measures against our institutions and our economy.” He did not name the United States, but his statement, that Brazil “will continue as an independent nation and as a people free from any kind of tutelage,” was met with applause.
Solid democracies, he argued, go “beyond the electoral ritual”; they guarantee people’s most “basic rights: food, security, work, housing, education and health.” Democracy, he pointedly added, loses “when it closes its doors and blames migrants for the world’s ills,” warning also that “poverty is as much an enemy of democracy as extremism.”
Turning to the world’s wars and conflicts, he addressed the looming threat of U.S. intervention in Venezuela on the pretext of fighting drugs. Drugs are most effectively fought by cooperation on “cracking down on money laundering and limiting the arms trade. Using lethal force in situations that do not constitute armed conflicts is tantamount to executing people without trial. Other parts of the world have already witnessed interventions that have caused greater damage than they were intended to prevent, with serious humanitarian consequences,” he warned. “Dialogue must not be closed off in Venezuela.”
