🇲🇽Roberto Velasco ÁlvarezMexico · UNGA 81 speech

Mr. President, Excellencies, I am appearing Addressing this Assembly, representing the first female president of my country, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, whose government places people at the heart of the actions of the state and works on a daily basis to achieve freedom, democracy, social justice and substantive equality. Mexico conducts its public life according to a conviction that I'm bringing to you today. from this rostrum to make shared prosperity a reality for all people. This conviction coincides with the commitments that we all made in the United Nations Charter, whose first article establishes as goals to maintain international peace and security, to engage in friendly relations between nations, and to cooperate to resolve economic, social, and cultural problems and humanitarian problems, promoting respect for human rights without any type of distinction. Mexico, a culture with more than 3,000 years of history, is experiencing a profound transformation that is a continuation of the journey that was started with the independence movement, the reform, and then the revolution, the three defining moments when my country expanded the rights of its people. My country today aspires to achieve a prosperous society with rights and a decent life for all. This is a transformation with clear goals to bring about shared well-being, to strengthen our competitiveness, to develop our own capacities and to determine our own destiny. It's for this reason that my country has come to share the experience of a nation that decided to show through concrete actions that it is possible to improve the quality of life of our people by expanding their rights and their capacity to exercise these rights. Please allow me to underscore some of the progress made. The first is the reduction of poverty. Between 2018 and 2024, more than 13 million people were lifted out of poverty in Mexico, the most significant reduction in the history of our country. It's also important to underscore that in 2025, we had the lowest in poverty rate in our history. This effort continues with a national social policy. In 2026, the well-being programs of our countries reached 42.8 million people. In addition to this, we have sustained investment in infrastructure, healthcare, trains, highways, schools, and water infrastructure. Looking towards 2030, the investment in infrastructure for development with well-being plan plans to make investments in energy, transport, water, health, education, and emerging technology. The second concrete action is security that the government of President Sheinbaum understands from a comprehensive perspective, addressing the causes that push youth towards crime and also zero impunity. And the results speak for themselves. In just 22 months, the 22 months to July 2026, intentional homicides declined by around 51%. This is the result of a national security strategy that is being strengthened thanks to international cooperation on shared challenges, and that, I'd like to respectfully recall, is grounded in four principles. One, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. 2. Shared but differentiated responsibility 3. Mutual respect and trust 4. Cooperation without subordination This milestone was not achieved through war, nor by renouncing human rights or through reliance on force as the sole response. Mexico combines education and employment for youth with intelligence, investigation, strengthening institutions, and boosting the presence of the state where before it was absent. Today, we can say proudly that our progress in security really make Mexico stand out on the international stage. That's why we wish to put forward a truth to this Assembly. a truth that is valid for all peoples that peace cannot be decreed or imposed it's built with social justice the third action is focused on employment since 2018 the minimum wage has increased in real terms by 154 percent and today we have the highest purchasing power in more than four decades and we achieved this with dialogue between the government workers and employers with inflation under control and one of the lowest unemployment rates of any OECD economy We've demonstrated in practice something that was denied for decades in theory, and that is that paying workers better does not make economies poorer, it actually strengthens them. The fourth action that we've engaged in has transformed the history of our country. For the first time in two centuries of independent life, Mexico is being governed by a woman, and this did not happen alone, and she's not governing alone either. She that has a cabinet with gender parity, a congress with gender parity, and a reform that made substantive equality a constitutional mandate. And today, girls in Mexico grow up knowing that they can achieve anything they want to. The fifth action is the exercise of a foreign policy with sovereignty and independence. Mexico has shown that a country can cooperate closely and respectfully with its partners and at the same time fully uphold its sovereignty. This independence is also measured by how we protect Mexican citizens that live outside of our territory, overseas. Mexico supports its diaspora, its community abroad, by defending their human rights wherever they are, always strictly respecting international law. This Mexican transformation is designed to benefit precisely those who historically have been left behind. Our policies are based on a very clear gender perspective, boosting the rights of women, prioritizing the poorest, indigenous peoples, persons of African descent, persons with disabilities, children, infants, older persons, and people of different sexual and gender identities. President Excellencies, Mexico's foreign policy is rooted in the normative principles of our constitution that transcend any particular administration or international circumstance and that our people have forged throughout our history. We defend self determine the self determination of peoples non interference because we know that they are the best guarantee of peace and stability between nations. We are in favor of the peaceful settlement of disputes. By prohibiting the threats to use or the use of force, and we believe in legal equality between states because sovereignty is not measured in armies or material resources. All nations, all peoples have the same value before the law. We promote international cooperation with development. We ensure the respect, protection and promotion of human rights that are also something that are at the very heart of our constitution. And we also fight for international peace and security, which is the basis of the development of peoples. Those who look to these constitutional mandates will find reflected in them the purposes and principles of the San Francisco Charter, in whose drafting the contribution of Mexican diplomacy is clearly relevant. Mexico does not need to adapt its foreign policy to the UN Charter because the UN Charter is enshrined in our Constitution. When my country defends multilateralism, we are fulfilling a constitutional mandate. This is the legacy of Benito Juarez, Venustiano Carranza and Genaro Estrada. Three names.

And with the same conviction that the law is the only legitimate force between nations, and this conviction does not allow for any exceptions in or any selective uses. In the face of international conflicts, Mexico. has a firm position that international law must prevail over force, that civilian populations must be protected, that the territorial integrity of nations must be respected, and that all disputes must be settled by way of dialogue, negotiations, and peace. It's for this reason that Mexico has defended the two-state solution for decades and recognizes the state of Palestine, as well as the right of its people to live in peace within safe and recognized borders. aware that this position would not be sufficient without institutions that are able to uphold it, Mexico is working to strengthen this house and make it in particular in an environment of global polarization. Mexico and Norway founded the UNAT global group supporting the reforms undertaken by the Secretary General, focused on building with practical actions a more effective and transparent United Nations. With Qatar, Norway and Switzerland, we are engaging in a strengthening of the mediation capacities of the organization. Each and every conflict that diplomacy can prevent is worth more than all of those that force seeks to resolve. This same commitment is also being engaged in our own region, in Latin America and the Caribbean. Mexico will continue to work to preserve the nature of the zone of peace that our peoples created for ourselves and to strengthen cooperation in fora such as CELAC and the Pacific Alliance. Our regional vocation also explains Mexico's position, the position that we have had for more than six decades, and that solidarity with the people of Cuba, rejecting the embargo and any unilateral measure that is against the UN Charter. We will continue to send humanitarian aid to address the most urgent needs of its population, because the fraternity between our nations does not depend on any given situation in any moment or differences between us. This solidarity is also calling on us to pool our efforts to deal with regional differences on the basis of dialogue and working with one another. Above and beyond our hemisphere, we are strengthening our links with Asia and Africa and recently modernized our partnership with the European Union, confirming the close links between partners. and this doesn't ever mean that we have different distance between other partners either. President Excellencies, Mexico believes in this organization and today faces a huge challenge resolving and renewing compliance of the foundational mandate to save humanity from the scourge of armed conflicts, to protect human rights, to improve the situation of millions of vulnerable people and to ensure that international law is respected. This renewal also reaches the leadership of this organization because soon we will have a new person at the helm of the UN Secretariat and Mexico would like to be crystal clear on this. At the United Nations, it is also time for women. Alfonso Reyes, diplomat and humanist, left Mexico taught Mexico rather a lesson that today we'd like to bring to this assembly. The only way of being usefully national is being generously universal. This is the vocation of our foreign policy, and Mexico knows that no nation can build its future in isolation and that Sovereignty is strengthened through dialogue and respectful collaboration between all peoples. Mexico came up to this rostrum with a conviction, and we are ending with the very same conviction, that the legitimacy of institutions depends on their ability to transform through action the life of people. As President Claudia Sheinbaum has said, Mexico is advancing along the path of shared prosperity, with independence, with freedom, and always with dignity. With this as our lodestar, we will continue to work for a United Nations that lives up to its founding promise. Thank you very much.