[On the death of President Jorge Sampaio] … He was a former President of Portugal. He has worked for the United Nations, and if you allow me to say a few words in Portuguese, I would be very grateful.

É com profunda tristeza e emoção, que sinto a perda do Jorge Sampaio. Portugal perdeu um grande estadista. As Nacões Unidas perderam um colaborador valioso, sobretudo em aspetos de solidariedade e em aspetos de promoção da paz e do diálogo entre culturas e civilizações.
 
Eu perdi um muito querido amigo. Quero uma vez mais expressar a Maria José Sampaio e a sua família as minhas sinceras condolências e a minha profunda solidariedade.

Good afternoon. 

I have just come from the General Assembly hall, where I presented my report on Our Common Agenda.

No doubt you have seen many UN reports, but this one is not a typical one. 

Our Common Agenda goes beyond the crucial issues we talk about every day, to consider where our world is, and what we need to do to fix it. 

Because business as usual is not an option. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken more than 4 million lives, is still killing nearly 10,000 people every day, and is circling the globe while a handful of rich countries stockpile vaccines. 

Climate breakdown and nuclear war pose extreme risks to human life and to our planet. It is difficult to conceive of a more destabilizing invention than autonomous lethal weapons. 

Inequality, discrimination and injustice are bringing people out on the streets, while conspiracy theories and lies fuel deep divisions within societies. 

Poverty, hunger and gender inequality are rising again, after decades of decline.

Our world is edging towards a new abnormal: more chaotic, more insecure, more dangerous for everyone.

We are moving in the wrong direction, and we are at a pivotal moment. The choices we make now could put us on a path towards breakdown and a future of perpetual crisis; or breakthrough to a greener and safer world.

The General Assembly recognized this when it asked me last year to report back with recommendations on Our Common Agenda. 

Today’s report represents our best effort to grapple with the challenges and threats we face, and to chart a road ahead based on unity and solidarity. 

My report on Our Common Agenda takes a long, hard look at global governance, and finds it wanting. From global health to digital technology, many of our multilateral frameworks need updating to deal with today’s challenges.

We don’t need new multilateral bureaucracies. But we must [make] those we have, including the United Nations, more effective. 

And we need multilateralism with teeth. 

First, we need immediate action to protect our most precious global assets, from the oceans to outer space, and to deliver on our common aspirations: peace, global health, a livable planet. 

My report proposes a global Summit of the Future to consider all these issues and more, to be held in two years. 

The summit would consider too a New Agenda for Peace that would include measures to reduce strategic risks from nuclear arms, cyberwarfare and lethal autonomous weapons. 

The Summit would go beyond traditional security threats to look into the long-term future, exploring ways to strengthen global governance of digital technology and outer space, and to manage future risks and crises. 

To prepare the summit, I will ask an Advisory Board led by eminent former heads of state and government to identify what are the global public goods and potentially other areas of common interest where governance improvements are most needed, where the systems we have now are not sufficiently effective and to propose options for how this could be achieved. 

A central theme of my report is that we must expand our field of vision, using new technologies to forecast and model the impact of today's policies, while strengthening global coordination and introducing new voices to decision-making processes. 

A new United Nations Futures Lab will publish regular reports on megatrends and risks. 

Biennial Summit meetings at Heads of State and government level between the G20, ECOSOC and international financial institutions can align the global financial system with global priorities, from sustainable development and climate action to addressing inequality. We need effective coordination in financial and development issues.

These summits would be a corrective to historic injustices and imbalances in the global economy, from trade to the development of technology. 

I recommend an Emergency Platform bringing together governments, the UN system, international financial institutions, civil society, the private sector and others, that would be triggered automatically in large scale crises. 

I also propose that Member States should consider repurposing the Trusteeship Council, to create an intergovernmental body for intergenerational issues. 

A special envoy for future generations will represent the interests of people who will be born over the coming century, while a new United Nations Youth Office will enable young people to participate in designing our shared future and have a much stronger influence in the UN itself. 

And I intend to broaden engagement with local and regional governments, civil society, parliaments and the private sector. 

To support these efforts, we will launch a UN 2.0 that offers more relevant, systemwide, multilateral and multi-stakeholder solutions to the challenges of the 21st century. 

Dear friends,

Global cooperation for peace, sustainable development and human rights can only be built on solidarity within countries. 

And the report proposes a series of measures to rebuild trust and social cohesion through a new social contract anchored in human rights. 

This would herald a new era for social protection, including universal health coverage and income protection, housing, decent work, transforming education, skills and lifelong learning; and preventing and ending the epidemic of discrimination and violence against women and girls that holds back all of humanity.

A World Social Summit would anchor the new social contract at the global level, giving a strong push to the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.

All these efforts will require economic analysis based on today’s priorities, rather than outdated ideas of prosperity and economic success.

And so, my report therefore recommends ending the tyranny of Gross Domestic Product as a yardstick, and replacing it with metrics that measure our wellbeing and that of our planet.

Today, if we burn a forest or if we burn coal we are producing GDP and that shows the absurdity of using it as the only metric.

My report also urges all governments to reinvigorate action on human rights, including in our online lives. I urge steps to achieve internet access for all as a basic human right by 2030. 

And I propose global action to tackle disinformation and conspiracy theories, and promote facts and science in public discourse. 

We must make lying wrong again. 

Ladies and gentlemen, 

The United Nations and our Member States are central to the vision and implementation of Our Common Agenda. 

My report responds to a request from Member States, and many of its ideas emerged from our consultations with them and with a broader group of stakeholders. 

Our immediate joint challenge is the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We still have an opportunity to act together, in solidarity and self-interest, to end the pandemic before it does even more damage. 

I hope the forthcoming General Debate will see action on a global vaccination plan, implemented by an emergency Task Force made up of countries that produce or can produce vaccines, the World Health Organization, and its partners, and international financial institutions. 

This Task Force should work with pharmaceutical companies guaranteeing at least that production of vaccines will double, and ensure that vaccines reach seventy percent of the world’s population in the first half of 2022. 

The next two weeks will also see opportunities for action on the climate crisis, on an inclusive, equitable recovery from the pandemic, including decent jobs and social protection, on ending the scourge of racial discrimination, on transforming our food systems so that they deliver for all, and on eliminating nuclear weapons. 

In all these meetings, I hope Member States will heed the warning signs and the calls of their own people for unity and solidarity. 

And I hope that they will see my report on Our Common Agenda as the beginning of a global effort to come together and fulfil the potential of nations united. The high-level week will be a first opportunity for political leaders to pronounce themselves.

Thank you, and now I am, of course, ready to take a few questions.