From the General Assembly to Harlem: Mandela’s call to action endures
Diplomats stood alongside city officials and neighbourhood volunteers, dishing out plates rather than platitudes, in a small but pointed answer to a question the UN spent Monday asking in more formal terms: what does Mandela's legacy actually demand of us now? That question sat at the centre of the General Assembly's commemoration of Nelson Mandela International Day, where the focus fell squarely on poverty and inequality – and on whether the world is living up to the example Mandela set.
UN Photo/Loey Felipe
Courtenay Rattray, Chef de Cabinet of the Secretary-General, addresses the General Assembly on the observance of the annual Nelson Mandela International Day.
‘The wrong choices’ Secretary-General António Guterres, speaking through his Chef de Cabinet, Courtenay Rattray, did not mince words. Mandela understood that the world's deepest problems come from human decisions – and can therefore be undone by different ones, Mr. Rattray said. Right now, he warned, the world is doing the opposite: pouring resources into militaries while poverty and development needs go underfunded. “There is something deeply wrong when we spend more on the instruments of destruction and death than on the tools of development and peace,” he said.
