MANHATTAN: On 18 July every year, United Nations invite the people all over the world to mark Nelson Mandela International Day by making a difference in their communities.
UN believes that everyone has the ability and the responsibility to change the world for the better and Mandela Day is an occasion for all to attempt to bring bout a change. This year, the theme, “It’s still in our hands to combat poverty and inequality,” resonates deeply with Mandela’s lifelong commitment to social justice.
Message by António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, on Nelson Mandela International Day 2024:
“Nelson Mandela showed us the extraordinary difference one person can make in building a better world.
“And as the theme of this year’s Nelson Mandela International Day reminds us – combatting poverty and inequality is in our hands.
“Our world is unequal and divided.
“Hunger and poverty are rife.
“The richest one per cent are responsible for the same quantity of planet-wrecking greenhouse gases as two-thirds of humanity.
“These are not natural facts. They are the result of humanity’s choices. And we can decide to do things differently.
“We can choose to eradicate poverty.
“We can choose to end inequality.
“We can choose to transform the international economic and financial system in the name of equity.
“We can choose to fight racism, respect human rights, combat climate change, and create a world that works for all humanity.
“Every one of us can contribute – through actions large and small.
“I join the Nelson Mandela Foundation in urging everyone to perform 67 minutes of public service on Nelson Mandela International Day – one minute for each year he fought for justice.
“Together, let’s honour Madiba’s legacy and turn our hands towards building a better world for all.”
Nelson Mandela stated (in 1994):
“It surely must be one of the great ironies of our age that this August Assembly is addressed, for the first time in its 49 years, by a South African Head of State drawn from among the African majority of what is an African country.
“Future generations will find it strange in the extreme that it was only so late in the 20th century that it was possible for our delegation to take its seat in the Assembly, recognized both by our people and the nations of the world as the legitimate representative of the people of our country.
“It is indeed a most welcome thing that this august Organization will mark its 50th anniversary next year with the apartheid system having been vanquished and consigned to the past.
“That historic change has come about not least because of the great efforts in which the UN engaged to ensure the suppression of the apartheid crime against humanity. In all we do, we have to ensure the healing of the wounds inflicted on all our people across the great dividing line imposed on our society by centuries of colonialism and apartheid.
“We must ensure that color, race and gender become only a God-given gift to each one of us and not an indelible mark or attribute that accords a special status to any. We must work for the day when we, as South Africans, see one another and interact with one another as equal human beings and as part of one nation united, rather than torn asunder, by its diversity.
“The road we shall have to travel to reach this destination will by no means be easy. All of us know how stubbornly racism can cling to the mind and how deeply it can infect the human soul. Where it is sustained by the racial ordering of the material world, as is the case in our country, that stubbornness can multiply a hundred-fold.
“And yet however hard the battle will be, we will not surrender. Whatever the time it will take, we will not tire. The very fact that racism degrades both the perpetrator and the victim commands that, if we are true to our commitment to protect human dignity, we fight on until victory is achieved.”
Newspakistan.tv
