After the creation of the United Nations, we all thought that peace and the achievements of social conquests would be permanent, but, over the years, “we have woken up from that dream” and today we find ourselves in a divided and polluted world, for what we should meet today to seek solutions, discuss, debate and take a step forward: “it is now or never,” said the president of Guatemala on Tuesday in his speech at the high-level debate of the General Assembly.
“With the same will that we took on the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic presented us with more than two years ago, with the same impetus, we have worked to overcome its effects and the consequences of other world events that have shown how interdependent we are human beings”, said Alejandro Giammattei.
The Guatemalan president denounced that the lack of equitable access to the world market for vaccines against the coronavirus, which prevented the lives of tens of thousands of people from being saved, and that COVID-19 “showed us that there are situations and threats that do not recognize borders or categories, that all the states of the world are vulnerable and that we are not prepared to face it globally, but above all in solidarity”.
A situation that can be overcome through unity and finding a balance between the health of people and the economy and seeking the common good, when the country’s gross domestic product grew by 8% last year.
He then highlighted the ravages caused by climate change in Central America by stating that they continue to recover from the disasters caused this year and in previous years “without the industrialized world, which is the real cause of this catastrophe, responding with solutions to what they have caused.”
He recalled that his country is one of the twenty nations that is home to more than 70% of the planet’s biological diversity and that it constantly faces threats that endanger the natural heritage of Guatemala and of humanity.
Regarding environmental advances, he announced that by 2032 he expects that 80% of energy production will be exceeded through renewable sources.
However, he announced a crisis of food and nutritional insecurity that leaves “more famine in the face of the indolence of the countries that have more compared to those that have little or nothing.”
The smuggling of migrants is a national security issue
Among the main causes of the migratory phenomenon, he listed economic factors and those related to climate change and that his Government worked on structural solutions that, with a view to the future, is the only thing that will allow irregular migration to be stopped.
“To do this, we have promoted a package of laws that stimulates investment with the necessary legal certainty that allows the generation of employment to attend to the basic needs of the population, as well as a law that promotes social housing,” he explained. .
He also highlighted that the smuggling of migrants has become an issue of both national and transnational security and that “massive irregular flows of migrants” who came from “regional and extra-regional” nations have been detained.
In this regard, he mentioned the approval of the law against the smuggling of migrants and called on regional governments to work together, counting on “a standardized approach to irregular migration and the necessary legislation.”
Internationally, Giammattei joined “the global outcry for the end of the war in Ukraine and the threats against the sovereignty of Taiwan and Israel.”
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