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Remarks at the UN meeting entitled 58th Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly [1]

['March', 'Topics']

Date: 2025-03-04 20:54:10+00:00

Edward Heartney

Minister Counselor to ECOSOC

New York, New York

March 4, 2025

AS PREPARED

International Day of Peaceful Coexistence – Bahrain

“Thank you. The United States strongly supports efforts to sustain peace and pursue diplomatic solutions to crises in the world.

We firmly support individual rights as expressed through freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and religion or belief. They are fundamental to America’s security and the promotion of tolerance, mutual respect, and peace around the world.

We have, however, decided to call a vote on this resolution. We have a concern that this resolution is a reaffirmation of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although framed in neutral language, Agenda 2030 and the SDGs advance a program of soft global governance that is inconsistent with U.S. sovereignty and adverse to the rights and interests of Americans.

In the last U.S. election, the mandate from the American people was clear: the government of the United States must refocus on the interests of Americans. We must care first and foremost for our own – that is our moral and civic duty. President Trump also set a clear and overdue course correction on “gender” and climate ideology, which pervade the SDGs.

Put simply, globalist endeavors like Agenda 2030 and the SDGs lost at the ballot box. Therefore, the United States rejects and denounces the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals, and it will no longer reaffirm them as a matter of course.

We are also concerned that the resolution’s titular reference to ‘peaceful coexistence’ could be co-opted to imply the United Nations’ endorsement of China’s Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which are not the product of UN-recognized negotiations by member states and were not endorsed through UN processes. Any attempt to imply such endorsement could undermine the UN’s independence, circumvent important processes, and deny member states the opportunity to shape the direction of the UN. Further, it would undermine international calls for accountability for China’s flagrant human rights abuses.

Similarly, the concept of ‘dialogue among civilizations’ is rooted in President Xi Jinping’s Global Civilization Initiative that seeks to shield Beijing from criticisms over its governance system and human rights abuses by redefining the basic meaning of terms such as democracy, human rights, and justice – and twisting definitions previously set down in foundational texts such as the UN Charter to suit PRC interests. “

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[1] Url: https://usun.usmission.gov/remarks-at-the-un-meeting-entitled-58th-plenary-meeting-of-the-general-assembly/

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