– As delivered –
Statement by H.E. Volkan Bozkir, President of the 75th Session of the United Nations General Assembly
17 September 2020
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates,
President of the IPU and my long term very trusted friend Gabriella Cuevas, and Speaker Mudenda,
I am excited to have the opportunity to address all of you today and to receive this Declaration from you. I have left all my titles when becoming the President of the General Assembly, except one title, I am still a Parliamentarian. So I wouldn’t like Gabriella to say that the number of Parliamentarians in the world has been decreased by one because one of our Parliamentarians left us and became PGA, but I think it shows my respect to be a Parliamentarian and a Parliamentarian represents many things, doesn’t get instructions from anywhere, and only cares about the constituents and the countries and the parliamentary diplomacy. So I also thought that as the President of the General Assembly has an impartial duty being a Parliamentarian exactly fits into what the PGA is going to do.
So this is a virtual meeting. I hope that our next meeting we will be able to have in person. I am lucky to come to New York at a better time when all tragedies have been lived and unfortunate deaths occurred. I from here pay respect to all the lives lost and I hope that those people who are still suffering in hospitals will come back healthy very soon but I think we are now trying to bring back meetings in the General Assembly or in the United Nations in an in person format. So we had three or four General Assembly meetings, some of the Committees are meeting, the Security Council is meeting in person, so we are looking forward to the High Level meeting which starts next week, cross our fingers so if we manage to continue like this and have no negative instances, we might be able to enlarge this format to have more in person meetings.
I warmly welcome the adoption of this Declaration at the Fifth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament on 20 August 2020. In particular, I am pleased to see that the Declaration firstly reaffirms your belief in the purposes and principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations, and I am also happy that your commitment that the UN remains the cornerstone of strong and effective global action.
So I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for your tireless support of the United Nations as the principle instrument of international cooperation. The messages from the United Nations and IPU mutually reinforce each other, just like the IPU Declaration and the UN75 Declaration by Members States, which will be adopted on Monday. So I would be very happy to put them side-by-side and this is a message from the parliamentarian world and from the United Nations to the world, to the people, and I think it covers the needs and the expectations of all parts of the world.
The continued engagement of Parliaments is also essential to ensure that UN initiatives are transferred into reality. The parliaments have a critical role in supporting the national ownership of the Agenda 2030.
So dear friends, you know that I have been a Member of Parliament since 2011. I served before that in the diplomatic service. I think having served for almost forty years as a diplomat, it was a lifestyle. But becoming a Parliamentarian also became a lifestyle. The mines in the field of diplomacy actually exist in the parliamentary world as well, so in a way if you care about the same mines and walk through the same mine fields, I think you will be successful in diplomacy and also in the parliamentarian world. A Parliamentarian also has a diplomatic job. I think diplomacy is a main part of a Parliamentarian. I think, a Parliamentarian must to be strong, outspoken, ready to fight and go for result orientated actions. But it must be done in a diplomatic way, then you get better results. You can say things ten different ways but as somebody talk about a diplomat, which I think is the same as a Parliamentarian, that a diplomat can tell you to go to hell, you’ll look forward to this trip, is the terminology. So I think a Parliamentarian, while seeing thousands of people, attending meetings and talking to crowds, I think you can choose also to use the soft power, which is used in the diplomatic world.
As Parliamentarians, and Representatives at the United Nations, I think we have an enormous responsibility to the individuals we represent. I think to ensure our proposals and actions have long term positive impacts, they must best suit those we serve. And we cannot expect to know what the most appropriate actions are is we do not involve the individuals we serve in discussions regarding their future prosperity and wellbeing.
So in this regard, I would like to congratulate you on your efforts to make parliaments more representative and inclusive. This approach I think will only serve to strengthen our institutions. Organizations that fail to address the expectations of their constituents are doomed to failure. And they lose trust and respect if commitments are not in line with the needs or the actions are not effective. And they fail when commitments made do not become national realities.
It is the same as the multilateral level. We must consider a diverse range of opinions to ensure an effective response to our common challenges. If we fail to do this, multilateralism will fail.
To this end, I will use the 75th Session of the UN General Assembly to ensure a diversity of voices, including women, civil society and the most vulnerable and those in need. And I also fully appreciate the importance of parliamentary contributions to national, regional and global governance and decision-making.
So the continued engagement of Parliaments is also essential to ensure that UN initiatives are transferred into reality. The parliaments have a critical role in supporting the national ownership of the Agenda 2030. And as set out in the Declaration, it is time to redouble your efforts to help implement the Agenda fully and effectively through action in your respective parliaments. The pandemic has made this task more urgent. The UN and Parliaments are key allies in the fight against the pandemic and in making the build back better strategy a reality.
As Parliamentarians let me also remind you the you are a privileged vector of UN normative power. Your actions reinforce the legitimacy of the United Nations. This is our collective responsibility and I look forward to working with parliamentary stakeholders during my term as President of the General Assembly on existing and new initiatives based on shared principles and responsibilities.
I thank you very much for having me here. I am very happy that I am still a part of the parliamentarian world.
Thank you.
