“Who will stand up for the people?”
To anyone remotely familiar with world affairs, it comes as no surprise that in its 76- years history, the United Nations has rarely seen many women occupy the spotlight during its annual General Assembly (the gathering known to critics as the annual festival of empty promises and hollow commitments). After all, how many women leading nations of the world can you name, especially with Germany’s Angela Merkel now retired?
In truth, statements by (men) world leaders at the UN annual talkfest are often a fascinating exercise in bad faith (watch them profess how they will fight climate change, racism, and inequalities), a disturbing series of exposés on how to live in an alternate reality, and frankly a boring raft of statements better suited for people desperately in search of cheap ways to fall asleep.
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On 24 September, however, one Black woman leader, Mia Amor Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, broke the trend and stole the show. She didn’t offer a sniding attack against another world leader (As Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez did to George W. Bush in 2006, referring to him as “the devil”); nor did she threaten to fight any war unless her offer for peace was accepted (as the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat did in 1974), nor did she hug the podium for a marathon speech (as Cuba’s Fidel Castro did in 1960, keeping the floor for a record 269 minutes); and most certainly she made no scene (unlike the late Lybian leader Mouamar Kaddafi tearing down the UN charter in 2009).
No, what Prime Minister Mottley did was to express in dramatic fashion the shameful condition of a world flush with riches yet unable to care for the poor, the reality of a (western) world flushed with vaccines yet unwilling to share, and the tragedy of a world facing the real and present danger of a climate catastrophe yet unwilling to make the right move. Her speech, only 15-minutes long, is both a moral and political wake-up call, which the world needs to hear and you should listen to.
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