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In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful, your Excellency, president of the General Assembly, Your Excellency, Secretary General, ladies and gentlemen, may the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you. I extend my congratulations to His Excellency, Mr. Khalilur Rahman, on his assumption of the presidency of this session and wish him every success. I also thank Her Excellency Miss Annalena Baerbock for her efforts in presiding over the work of the previous session. I would also like to commend the efforts and endeavours of His Excellency Mr. António Guterres the Secretary General, throughout his term of office. I would also like to express our appreciation to the staff of the United Nations system for their efforts amid difficult and complex circumstances. I stand before you today at a time when our region is going through one of its most dangerous phases. You are all aware of the dimensions of the crisis in the Gulf and its repercussions on the entire world. The crisis we are currently facing should come as no surprise to anyone. It is the cumulative result of years of postponing, crisis management through temporary solutions and unrealistic policies.
Your Excellency, Mr. Khalilur Rahman, President of the General Assembly; Your Excellency, António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations; Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, Your Excellencies. May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you. A year ago, I stood before you representing my people for the first time in 60 years. I recalled the victory of our people and stressed that this is a victory for the world as a whole.
Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful. Mr. president of the United Nations General Assembly. Your Excellency, the Secretary General of the United Nations. Excellencies. Esteemed ladies and gentlemen. Peace be upon you. And God's mercy and blessings. It is with great honor and pride that I stand before this international forum representing the Republic of Iraq, the home of the first civilizations.
One of the most urgent threats today is the loss of human control over weapons. Every Austrian, and I believe maybe a lot of people here, knows the Terminator movies about a machine sent to kill humans. This killer robot was played by a famous Austrian born Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the movies, Skynet learns to choose its own targets and starts a war. Well, in 1984, this was science fiction. Today it is not fiction anymore. Today, weapons with increasing autonomy or are already used on the battlefield. The direction is clear. Machines are gaining more freedom to find and strike targets. But a machine cannot understand surrender nor mercy. It cannot face a court or answer for a death. It must never have the final say over who lives and who dies. We therefore need international rules for autonomous weapons built around one clear principle no machine may decide to take a human life. Some will say that agreement is impossible when technology moves so quickly and major powers distrust one another. History says otherwise. Imagine this hall.
That is the right of our people, our responsibility towards them, and our trust to future generations. May the peace and mercy and blessings of Allah be upon you.
Finally. I address the sons and daughters of our Palestinian people in their homeland and in the diaspora. You have painted the greatest picture of pride and dignity by holding steadfastly onto your land, your unity, and your legitimate rights. We will not leave our homeland. We will not accept displacement, and we will not allow anyone to decide our future on our behalf. We decide for ourselves. We will extend our hands to a peace based on international legitimacy, so that our freedom and independence can be achieved, and so that everyone in the region, everyone in the region may live in security, peace and good neighbourliness. Peace be upon you all and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.
We cannot speak about interdependence without speaking about migration. People have always moved and they will continue to do so, and governments have a duty to manage that movement and to ensure that migration takes place safely, regularly and in accordance with the law. Order is itself a matter of human rights. When migration is left in the hands of smugglers and traffickers, people are exploited, placed in danger and sometimes lost at sea. But the way in which governments maintain order matters just as much. States have both the right and the responsibility to manage the borders. They must do so in full respect of international law and fundamental rights. A person's legal status may change. Their human dignity doesn't. Every person counts. That is why countries of origin transit and destination must work together. Safe, orderly and regular migration and respect for human rights are not competing ambitions. They must go hand in hand, and we can either manage our interdependence or be at its mercy. Health crises have taught us the same lesson. Outbreaks do not recognize borders. Cooperation is a necessity. Those who refuse to cooperate weaken themselves. But if our commitments are to hold, we also need institutions capable of upholding them.
To those cynics, I want to point out an instance that shows how hope can triumph over defeatism. And I go back to 1967 when representing the then geographically smallest member state of the Europe of the United Nations, a member state that had been a member of the United Nations for less than three years, Arvid Pardo spoke up in this General Assembly in a stirring speech, Malta's permanent representative made a passionate plea to the world's common humanity. He may have been speaking on behalf of a very small nation, but he had a very ambitious vision. Pardo Pardo called for the world to treat the resources of the oceans beyond their own borders as the common heritage of mankind. His demand for a law of the sea was prescient, but to achieve it took persistence. In fact, it took 27 years before it came into being. What motivated Malta's action, then, is what motivates Malta's demands now? Doing nothing meant leaving the world's oceans to the mercy of the world's biggest, strongest and richest nations. Taking action showed that, and I quote, they belonged to all of humanity. Those living and those who still had to be born. That spirit was evident was evident when, in 1988, right at the start of the concern about global warming, Malta proposed the United Nations General Assembly resolution that recognized climate change as a global problem, requiring collective and global solutions suspicion of collective action won't be counteracted by retreat. It will only be overcome by the strength to turn convictions into action.
There is no need to look too far. It's just enough to look at the picture that has unfolded over the last one year period. Consider this the past 12 months have gone down in history as one of the bloodiest periods of the last 30 years, marked by more than 60 conflicts and wars. From Gaza to Ukraine and Russia, from Myanmar to Darfur, from Iran to Lebanon, 250 000 people have lost their lives, and far more number of people have endured indescribable suffering. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave the lands where they were born and raised. In Gaza alone, over the past three years, we have lost 74000 of our brothers and sisters, most of them women and children. Mind you, we lost them to what we regard as acts of state terror by Israel. The people of Gaza are still searching for their loved ones beneath the rubble. They are recovering the bodies of their spouses, their children or parents. Innocent children who have lost their arms and legs in Israeli attacks are trying to return to school. They are trying to hold on to life with prosthetic legs made of wood. In Gaza's hospitals, more than 70% of power generators are currently out of service due to fuel shortages. Personally, as a father and as a grandfather who cherishes his children and grandchildren, I have to say the following from this podium with a heavy heart. Today, Gaza is not only the world's largest graveyard for children, it is also the place with the highest rate of child amputations in the world. Gaza has become the most inhumane and shameful concentration camp of our time. In fact, a cease fire was reached thanks to President Trump's efforts and with contributions of countries including my country, Turkey. But even after the cease fire, the number of Gazans killed exceeded 1500. Although the Palestinian Resistance movement has agreed to move to the second stage of the peace plan, the Israeli government refuses to stop the occupation. Meanwhile, the West Bank is witnessing the most severe period of what we regard as settler violence and terror. In Jerusalem, Muslims and Christians are being denied access to holy sites. There is an attempt to destroy UNRWA, which is our collective initiative. Now esteemed friends, today, once again I will speak from the heart with complete sincerity and without reservation. And I'll state straight some facts plainly. Please don't be offended or upset. I'm sorry, but this is not Tayyip Erdogan's personal matter. This is a humanitarian issue. It is a matter of conscience for all of us. We are faced with a genocidal mindset that can never get enough of killing. We are faced with an extremely serious situation. No one with a sense of humanity, mercy or compassion, no one guided by justice and conscience, can possibly remain indifferent to this picture.
