Remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power at the Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the First Meeting of the UN General Assembly

Watch Speech

Thank you, Mr. President, distinguished ambassadors, diplomats, Mr. Urquhart. Seventy years ago yesterday, on January 10th, 1946, the General Assembly convened for the very first time. They did not meet here in New York; they gathered in the Central Hall of Westminster, in London. It was a setting where it was literally impossible to forget what had led to the creation of the United Nations – and the monumental undertaking that brought the delegates from 51 nations together.

A foreign correspondent covering the UN meeting described the London setting as, “a grim capital, bleak and seared by the explosions of German aerial intruders.” Beneath the very rooms where the UN delegates met was a basement where hundreds of people had taken shelter during air raids over the course of the Second World War. Four dormitories had been set up there, with sandbags lining the walls. When bombs had struck nearby, the floor had shaken, light bulbs had flickered. People sheltering there had sometimes used books from the Central Hall as pillows, but few managed to get any sleep. While the Central Hall had been spared a direct strike over the course of the war, Westminster Abbey, just blocks away, had been hit. In one particularly intense raid on May 10th, 1941 – in which over 700 tons of explosives and 86,000 incendiaries were dropped on London over the course of a single night – the nearby House of Commons Chamber was completely destroyed, and the Houses of Parliament were hit repeatedly.

The first issue that the new General Assembly took up was the creation of a “commission to deal with the problems raised by the discovery of atomic energy” – energy which, of course, had been the source of the most devastating weapons used in the war. And on January 24, after weeks of debating, the General Assembly adopted its very first resolution, creating a commission that would not only promote the sharing of scientific information among nations for peaceful ends, but also seek a path toward “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction,” and toward establishing “effective safeguards…to protect complying States against the hazards of violations and evasions.”

Now just pause for a moment to take in the audacity of those goals, set out in the very first resolution adopted by the General Assembly, in its very first gathering. Those delegates were taking the aspiration set out only a few months earlier in the UN Charter – to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” – and they were trying to put it into practice.

Let me read to you part of what America’s delegate to that first General Assembly meeting – then-Secretary of State James Byrnes – said to his fellow delegates when they adopted that resolution: “The problems presented by the discovery of atomic energy and all other forces capable of mass destruction…are common responsibilities of all nations, and each of us must do our part…At this first session of the General Assembly, we must begin to put less emphasis on our particular viewpoints and particular interests, and seek with all our hearts and minds means of reconciling our views and our interests for the common good of humanity.”

And yet, 70 years after that ambitious first session, despite our common security and our common humanity, there are people in all of our nations – including my own – who do not believe that the UN has lived up to its purpose. They see this as a broken institution, defined more by what divides our Member States than what binds us together; an institution of inaction in the face of too much pain around the world.

It is not hard to understand why people feel this way. Look at all of the aspirations set out by the UN that do remain unfulfilled. Look at the grotesque starve-or-surrender tactics the Syrian regime is using right now against its own people. Look at the haunting pictures of civilians, including children – even babies – in Madaya, Syria. These are just the pictures we see. There are hundreds of thousands of people being deliberately besieged, deliberately starved, right now. And these images, they remind us of World War II; they shock the conscience. This is what this institution was designed to prevent. Look at the 62 million girls who are still not in school. Look at the terrible increases around the world in temperature and the devastating impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable. Look at the more than 60 million people displaced – the highest number since World War II. Seventy years after we set out “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights” and “in the dignity and worth of the human person” – it can feel sometimes as though, wherever one looks, rights are being trampled and dignity is being denied.

Consider, again, that ambitious goal set out in the first General Assembly resolution – aimed at eliminating weapons of mass destruction. Just last week, as you all know, North Korea carried out yet another a test of a nuclear weapon – flouting its obligations under multiple Security Council resolutions and the core principles of this institution, threatening the security of all of our nations.

Yet the fact that so many aspirations remain just that – aspirations – does not free us from the responsibility, which is in fact a tremendous privilege, of working with great urgency and purpose to fulfill them. The dangers and human costs of our failing to meet these goals are more, not less, profound today than they were 70 years ago. And that is certainly true of the risks of nuclear proliferation, as we are living in an age not only of rogue states, but of violent extremist groups that have made no secret of their desire to get their hands on WMD. That is why President Obama has set out, “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” – and why he has worked with determination and focus toward that goal. As the President has said, we recognize that, “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.” Yet while we can lead this effort, President Obama has stressed the obvious, “we cannot succeed in this endeavor alone.” This is, again, why this institution exists; a forum for mobilizing collective action.

For all the work that remains to be done to attain these goals and to meet our collective aspirations, to advance our common security and our common humanity, we have seen how the UN can play a truly pivotal role in tackling some of the greatest challenges of our time, whether that’s confronting deadly epidemics like HIV/AIDS, or more recently, Ebola; protecting civilians from atrocities in some of the most violent conflicts in the world, as UN peacekeepers are doing daily; applying collective pressure of the kind that led Iran to agree to a deal which, if implemented and rigorously enforced, will cut off its pathways to a nuclear weapon; or, as others have stressed, mobilizing global action to combat climate change and to eliminate extreme poverty.

The stakes of what we do here, at times, may feel less immediate and visceral than they were for the delegates from 51 nations who met seven decades ago in London. We will not walk out of this Assembly hall into a city “bleak and seared” by the ravages of war. We do not meet above a basement where people recently huddled, in terror, as bombs crashed overhead, hoping that they would live through the night. But our common security and our common humanity have never been so dependent on our ability to come together to confront common threats. And for millions of people around the world – the fear, the suffering, the indignity that led to the UN’s creation, and which it set out to overcome, are still a daily reality. Those people still place great hope in our United Nations; they still believe, rightly, that we have the unique power to change lives for the better – whether that is by ending conflict, by protecting them from those who would do them harm, by preserving our majestic planet, or by providing opportunities that they deserve but otherwise would not have. If that does not lead us to throw all of our “hearts and minds” into living up to their hopes, and to working together to reach our common aspirations, what will?

Thank you.

###