Colombian President Gustavo Petro denounced that in the United Nations, only the nations that have the power of destruction are heard, and not the countries that ask to unite human effort for the sake of existence.
During his speech at the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Petro stressed that the power of a country is no longer exercised according to the type of system, political or economic, but by the power to destroy humanity.
He said that “in this room, the communications capacity of a president depends on the amount of dollars he has in his budget, on the number of warplanes he has and, ultimately, on the capacity of his country to destroy humanity.”
Regarding the nations that do not have and do not exercise this power of destruction, the Colombian president asserted that “we speak without paying much attention and many times perhaps only to our own people, that is why they do not listen to us when we vote to stop the genocide in Gaza, even though we are the majority of the world’s presidents and representatives of most of humanity. They do not listen to us.”
Petro added: “If we ask that the debt be exchanged for climate action, they do not listen to us. If we ask that they stop the wars to concentrate on the rapid transformation of the world’s economy in order to save life and the human species, they do not listen to us either.”
He also stated that the current context has worsened, because “today things are worse than a year ago, 11 million hectares have been burned in the Amazon rainforest in just one month, due to global warming and the climate crisis.”
Petro recalled that scientists predicted that, if the Amazon rainforest burned, we would reach the point of no climatic return where human decisions to stop the collapse would be innocuous.
“A year ago, I asked for a peace conference for Palestine in this very place without the first bomb having exploded yet. Today, we have 20,000 children killed under the bombs and the presidents of the countries of human destruction laugh in these corridors,” he said.
The president also stated that the control of humanity, based on barbarism, is under construction and its demonstration is Gaza and Lebanon. “When Gaza dies, all humanity will die.”
Likewise, he argued that there is a reason for this Armageddon of the contemporary world, in the unreason of the governments that applaud genocide and do not act soon to change the economies towards decarbonization, there is a logic, which is not in the political world, nor in this lectern where all the presidents speak, the logic is outside and is called social inequality.
The Colombian head of state stressed that one percent of humanity is the one that allows genocide to be committed in Gaza, Lebanon or Sudan, or that rebel countries, which do not fit into their domain, such as Cuba or Venezuela, to be economically blocked. “One percent of humanity needs to show its power of destruction to the remaining 99 percent of humanity, so that they are allowed to continue directing the power of the world, appropriating and accumulating more and more of its wealth.”
