– Ladies and Gentlemen, It is with particular honor that I take the floor before this august Assembly to convey to you the warmest greetings of the Beninese people and to bring before you the voice of Benin: a voice resolutely committed to peace, dialogue and multilateralism; a voice that also intends to play its full part in the collective reflection on the future of our Organization and on that of our world.
Allow me, first of all, to pay special tribute to H.E. Mr. António GUTERRES, for whom this General Assembly is the last in his capacity as Secretary-General of the United Nations.
At the end of two (02) terms served during one of the most trying periods in our contemporary history, Benin salutes his constancy and his commitment to multilateralism and to respect for the Charter of the United Nations.
At a time when the temptation to withdraw is strong, he has consistently defended the idea that, in the face of crises, no nation can durably build its security and prosperity in isolation.
I express to him our profound gratitude and extend to him our warmest wishes for the continuation of his commitment in the service of humanity.
I would also like to extend my warm congratulations to H.E. Mr. Khalilur RAHMAN, President of this 81st session, and wish him every success in the accomplishment of his mandate.
– Excellencies,
– Ladies and Gentlemen, There are moments when History compels us to choose not only what we want to do, but also what we want to become.
It is with this question in mind that Benin is taking part in this session, animated by a deep conviction: the future is not awaited, it is prepared.
This conviction guides our country. It inspires the Benin 2060 Vision, which projects our Nation toward the centenary of its accession to independence.
But this ambition concerns not only our national destiny.
It also determines the way in which we look at the world, which is itself at a crossroads.
We are confronted with wars that are dragging on, the spread of terrorist threats, persistent geopolitical tensions, widening inequalities, debt that is reducing the capacity for action of many States, as well as climate disruption whose consequences affect the most vulnerable first.
At the same time, a technological transformation of considerable magnitude is accelerating. Artificial intelligence is already transforming knowledge, work, the economy, education and information.
Never has humanity had so many means at its disposal to act upon its destiny.
And yet, perhaps never has it been confronted, with such urgency, with the need to decide collectively how these means must be placed at the service of the common good.
That is why the theme of this 81st session: “Restoring trust, managing transformations: building a United Nations Organization serving all” resonates with particular force.
The real challenge of our time is therefore not only to manage the successive crises, but also to recover our collective capacity to anticipate, to decide and to act before crises become irreversible.
Benin believes in multilateralism. It believes in it not out of nostalgia for the world of 1945, but because the world of 2026 more than ever needs a space where States can speak to one another, listen to one another and act together.
But defending multilateralism also means looking at the United Nations with lucidity.
Trust, indeed, cannot be decreed. It is strengthened when our Organization is capable of responding to the expectations of those it serves and of producing concrete results. It is in this spirit that Benin supports the efforts undertaken within the framework of the UN80 Initiative.
We must seek greater effectiveness, coherence, transparency and accountability. But we must keep in mind one essential requirement: reforming the United Nations must not mean only reducing its costs. Above all, it must mean increasing its impact.
A more effective United Nations must be better able to prevent conflicts, respond to humanitarian crises, support development and anticipate the transformations that are already shaping our future.
It must also remain faithful to the principles that underpin its legitimacy: universality, the sovereign equality of States, solidarity and respect for the Charter.
– Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, There is one reform without which all the others will remain incomplete: that of the governance of international peace and security.
The Security Council remains largely a reflection of a balance conceived in a world that is no longer that of today.
Africa still has no permanent seat. This situation raises a question of justice, equity and, beyond that, of the legitimacy of the multilateral system itself.
Benin reaffirms its full support for the common African position, as set out in the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration.
We are not asking for a privilege: we are asking that the governance of international peace and security be more reflective of the world it claims to serve.
For Benin, the question of security has a particularly concrete dimension. Terrorism is striking our subregion. It seeks to exploit vulnerabilities, to make light of borders, and to gradually extend its hold into new areas.
Benin fully measures the gravity of this threat. In this regard, I should like solemnly to pay tribute to the courage and dedication of our defence and security forces, as well as to the resilience of the Beninese People.
Our response is resolute. We are strengthening our defence and security capacities. We are consolidating surveillance of our territory and our borders. We are intensifying our cooperation with our neighbours and our partners.
But the experience of our region teaches us one essential thing: faced with a threat that is evolving rapidly, we must learn to act more quickly before it turns into a crisis.
That is why we must make prevention, warning and early action the three (03) phases of one and the same security policy.
This requires better intelligence-sharing, stronger cross-border cooperation, and improved coordination among national, subregional and continental mechanisms.
Solidarity among States, regional cooperation, the action of the African Union and the support of the United Nations must therefore be better articulated.
But prevention cannot be reduced to a security issue, because while security requires means of defence, it is strengthened through development, social cohesion and the effective presence of the State.
Education, employment, infrastructure and the prospects offered to young people also contribute to preventing the vulnerabilities that terrorist groups seek to exploit.
Collective security cannot be sustainable without economic and financial security. There is indeed another fragility threatening international stability: the fragility of development financing.
Many developing countries today are faced with a particularly difficult equation. They must simultaneously accelerate their development, finance their energy transition, adapt to climate change, invest in health, education and the digital sector, while also responding to growing social needs.
Yet these requirements are accumulating in a context in which access to financing remains more costly and fiscal space is often more limited. This situation is neither sustainable nor equitable.
Benin therefore calls for the determined pursuit of the transformation of the international financial architecture, in order to enable developing countries to access financing that is more accessible, more predictable and better suited to their development trajectories.
We must also have the ambition to invest more in development, for investing in development means investing in peace, in security and in stability.
The climate issue also illustrates this requirement of justice.
Africa contributes relatively little to global greenhouse gas emissions, even though it is already bearing the full brunt of the consequences of climate disruption.
We are not asking for a right to pollute. We are asking for a right to development. We want adaptation, resilience-building and the issue of loss and damage to be addressed with the urgency required by the reality experienced by our populations.
We also want the energy transition to be an opportunity to industrialize, create jobs and strengthen access to energy.
For us, climate justice does not consist in setting development against transition. It consists in enabling developing countries to build a growth model that is more resilient, more inclusive and more sustainable.
We must also prepare for the next great transformation: that of artificial intelligence, which can become one of the most powerful accelerators of human development.
It can broaden access to knowledge, improve health systems, support farmers and make administrations more effective.
But it can also reproduce or amplify existing divides.
If Africa remains merely a consumer of technologies designed and controlled elsewhere, a new form of dependency could emerge: dependency linked to data, infrastructure, computing capacities and critical technologies. We must avoid it.
Benin therefore advocates international governance of artificial intelligence that is inclusive, responsible and development-oriented.
Africa must not be only a market for the technologies of tomorrow. It must also be able to be a space for creation, innovation and production.
It is on that condition that artificial intelligence can become not a new factor of division, but an instrument of emancipation, progress and shared development.
Confidence in international institutions is also linked to the confidence that peoples place in their own institutions.
Benin, for its part, is continuing the consolidation of its institutions and its democratic framework, in keeping with its Constitution and legal order.
We consider that stability, public accountability and citizen participation constitute essential conditions for sustainable development.
Our experience reinforces us in one conviction: the strength of institutions is one of the foremost infrastructures of peace.
We are convinced that if national trajectories may be different, they must nevertheless converge towards the same objective: to offer every people the necessary conditions to build its future in peace, dignity and stability.
Allow me now to address a dimension that touches at the heart of Benin’s identity. Our country is a land of memory, marked by greatness, resistance, but also by a tragic and painful history: that of daughters and sons torn from their lands, separated from their families and scattered throughout the world.
That history has left deep wounds. It has also created, over the generations, a diaspora whose link with the continent has never been extinguished.
We can neither rewrite that history nor erase the wounds of the past. But we can choose what we make of it.
Benin has chosen to make it a bridge.
We want to offer those who wish to reconnect with their African history the possibility of reweaving a living bond with the continent, with the land of their ancestors, from which they were torn away.
The possibility, under the conditions provided for by our legislation, of acquiring Beninese nationality thus carries a dimension that goes beyond the sole administrative act.
It is part of a desire to rebuild a relationship, to renew a bond and to transform a painful memory into a relationship oriented towards the future.
To this diaspora, which everywhere in the world looks towards Africa, Benin wishes to say this: you are the heirs of a painful history, but you can also become the actors of a new history in which memory would no longer be only the remembrance of what was lost, but also the point of departure for what can be rebuilt.
It is with this perspective that Benin intends to make reconnection with Afro-descendants not a simple return to the past, but an opening towards a shared future.
Benin does not want only to be a land of memory. It wants to be a land of reunion, transmission and future.
− Mr. President, − Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, We are often tempted to look to the future with चिंता. Let us instead look at it with lucidity, with confidence and above all with responsibility.
We already know much of what the future holds for us: (i) the climate will continue to change, (ii) technology will continue to transform our societies and our economies, (iii) Africa will carry greater weight in the demographic and economic balances of the world, (iv) security threats will continue their attempts to cross borders...
But above all, we know one thing: no State will be able to respond to these challenges alone.
So let us prepare ourselves. Let us prepare our countries. Let us prepare our institutions. Let us prepare multilateralism.
And above all, let us prepare to pass things on.
For the responsibility of a generation is not only to receive the world from those that preceded it, but to have the courage, the vision and the determination to make it better for those that will follow it.
It is this responsibility that Benin intends to assume: for itself, for Africa and within the United Nations.
Restoring trust means recovering the ability to act together. Managing transformations means choosing to prepare for them rather than to undergo them.
And making the United Nations an Organization at the service of all means ensuring that multilateralism recovers, in the lives of peoples, the strength and usefulness that are the basis of its legitimacy.
Benin is ready to play its full part in this.
I thank you.