Fifty UN General Assembly Debate Speeches Urge for Peace

Oct. 1, 2023, (EIRNS)—The anti-war group CODEPINK has helpfully compiled 50 statements for peace made at this year’s UNGA General Debate.

As this publication has already covered many of these interventions, we quote from only one here, that of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (and current President Pro Tem of CELAC):

“Let us clear certain ideational cobwebs from our brains,” he said.

“It is, for example, wholly unhelpful to frame the central contradictions of our troubled times as revolving around a struggle between democracies and autocracies. St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a strong liberal democracy, rejects this wrong-headed thesis. It is evident to all right-thinking persons, devoid of self-serving hypocrisy, that the struggle today between the dominant powers is centered upon the control, ownership, and distribution of the world’s resources.”

On Ukraine, he was clear:

“War and conflict rage senselessly across the globe; in at least one case, Ukraine, the principal adversaries—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia—may unwittingly open the gates to a nuclear Armageddon.... Russia, NATO and Ukraine should embrace peace, not war and conflict, even if peace has to rest upon a mutually agreed, settled condition of dissatisfaction.”