In September 2024, Cabo Verde launched a call for a global compact for climate mobility, and in June, in Berlin, 57 countries endorsed the global consensus on the principles to address climate mobility. And at the United Nations, Cabo Verde co-facilitated negotiations on the political declaration of the Third Conference on the Oceans and the Declaration on Sea Level Rise. Because a country made up of islands, protecting the ocean is not just an environmental policy; it's a question of protecting national territory, the economy, the culture, and the future. In January 2027, Cabo Verde will take over the presidency of the Alliance of Small Island States, AOSIS. We will take on this responsibility by working for the unity of small island states, the implementation of the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda, for fairer financing, for climate adaptation, and for ensuring that the oceans remain at the heart of the global agenda. In 2034, we will host the 5th International Conference on Small Island Developing States. This is an opportunity to share experiences, build common responses, and transform vulnerabilities into opportunities. Ladies and gentlemen, there is also pedagogy in the relations between nations, and it begins with the ability to listen, to listen to each other.

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It is time to resume the offensive and inflict a defeat on denialism. Nature reminds us every day that we live on one planet. The glaciers in the Himalayas are melting. The super El Nino may cause torrential rains, droughts and forest fires in different parts of the globe. Its effects will hit the most vulnerable, the hardest. Brazil has been demonstrating that it is possible to combine economic growth with reduced emissions. We have achieved our self-sufficiency in oil and will continue to explore the potential of new reserves, such as those in the equatorial margin. But we will not abandon the environmental agenda. We will move forward with the roadmap for the decarbonization of the Brazilian economy. The Tropical Forest Forever facility, launched at Cop 30 in the city of Berlin, shows that it is possible to change old paradigms. The forest is worth more standing than destroyed. We will continue to reduce deforestation, which has been cut in half in the Amazon and reaching its lowest level in 11 years. We have the moral authority to reject protectionist measures disguised as commitment to the environmental cause. Brazil is a global reference in green energy. We have the critical minerals and the rare earths that the world needs to make the energy transition. Our natural wealth belongs to the Brazilian people, and it is in their benefit that it will be exploited.

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And those words give my compatriots and I courage to uphold the Pan-African and anti-colonial heritage that was bequeathed to us by our forebears. Another line in our item petitions God to fill our hearts with true humility and make us cherish fearless honesty. That prayer inspires me today to follow in the footsteps of Doctor Kwame Nkrumah, Haile Selassie, Nelson Mandela and other global icons who have stood at this very podium before me and have spoken boldly and fearlessly about the state of affairs in our world. The words the world may not transform overnight because of the speeches that we deliver here in this August assembly, but history would faithfully record the truths we choose to speak and the silences that we choose to keep When we are granted the privilege of addressing this global town hall. Allow me, therefore, to begin by reintroducing myself to the General Assembly. I stand before you as president of the Republic of Ghana. Yet we too often ascend these heights draped only in the ropes of our titles, forgetting that alongside each of us stands a history, a people, and a legacy I was born in a little town, Damango, which was then a modest community in northern Ghana, and it's now the capital of the Savannah region of my country. I was born to Mr. Emmanuel Adama Mahama of Berlin and Madam Abeba Naba of both of blessed memory. I belong to them and I belong to the foremothers and the forefathers who gave birth to them, who named them, who nurtured them, and who passed down the enduring values by which I live today. I grew up at the crossroads of several Ghanaian cultures. I speak Gonja, which is a language I speak three and Ghana. I am fluent in Hausa, spoken across the West African savanna and the Sahel.

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It's the opposite of genocide. So to all those that are spreading these lies about my country and about our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the anti-Semitic mayor of New York, I say this, shame on you. Shame on you for distorting the facts. Shame on you for inverting victim and aggressor. Shame on you for spitting in the face of truth. Mr. Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York. They talk to me. They tell me this isn't the city we remember. It changed so quickly now. It's no wonder you praise criminals convicted of supporting Hamas. You count as friends. People like Hasan Piker, who said America deserved 9/11. Some friends you have you invite into your home a Palestinian journalist who filmed Hamas terrorists beating and torturing Israeli hostages, and later admitted that he refused to publish the videos in order to protect, you guessed it, the terrorists. Your wife liked a post praising the October 7th massacre. She liked another post saying Tel Aviv shouldn't exist. You refuse to condemn any of that. You falsely repeatedly accused Israel of genocide. Mr. Mamdani, you tried to stop me from coming here. You tried. You tried to silence me. Well, you can't silence me. You can't silence the truth. And here's the simple truth. Here's a simple truth. Israel didn't commit genocide. Israel prevented genocide. And that's exactly. That's exactly what Mr. Mamdani's Hamas buddies would have done to us had we not stopped them. They would have killed every last one of us. The lies you and other anti-Semites spread about the Jews and the Jewish state have real consequences. In New York, Jews are threatened on the way to synagogue. Jews have been stabbed in the streets. Jews are demonized, targeted. They're targeted simply for being Jews. Jews have been murdered in Sydney, Manchester, Montreal, Boulder, Colorado. They've been attacked in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin, Washington, D.C. the anti-Semites of the world want to terrify our people. I have news for them. The days when Jews were defenseless victims marched to the slaughter. Those days are over. Today we have a state. Today we have an army. Today we have a people ready and willing to defend ourselves. So today. Today, I have one message for Jews around the world. Raise your head high. Be proud, be confident. Don't be intimidated Stand up.

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After the unimaginable World War II, started by Christian civilized Europe, we could not have hoped for anything less. But it seems that human beings can never really have enough wars, and never really learn lessons of history, never really care. After the Holocaust came the glorious birth of the State of Israel, but then came the Palestinian Nakba, 1948. Over the following years, we read about the wars of partition, famines in South Asia, the Korean War, the onslaught in Cambodia, Laos-Vietnam, the infamous Khmer Rouge genocide, later the Bosnian genocide, Rwanda genocide, and so many other wars. Then came the end of Cold War, bringing us euphoria, celebration, new promises of peace. The Berlin Wall collapsed, apartheid ended, but the seeds of future wars were sown, just as NATO and Gorbachev inked the post-Cold War arrangements. The ink had not even dried, and NATO began its fast eastbound expansion. As expected, for more than 4 years we have had this devastating war in Ukraine, a war that now has backfired into Russia.

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