1. People do not want declarations. They want solutions.
The theme of this Assembly challenges us: “restoring trust, managing transformation and making the United Nations deliver for all”.
It is a good theme and I enthusiastically endorse it.
But let us be honest, dear friends: people no longer want themes.
Our people want solutions to their problems.
For that reason, I do not come to this podium to recite beautiful phrases, full of grandiloquent words, that do not redound to the benefit of our citizens.
I come to speak about concrete problems. And to propose solutions.
And I come to speak on behalf of a country that rose up from the most heartrending war in the Western Hemisphere – the War of the Triple Alliance – which brought mourning to no fewer than four sister countries. A country that today is one of the fastest growing in the world.
Paraguay’s contribution is not a theory: it is an experience.
Facts teach us that war is abominable, that peace is the only objective, and that we have to stop watching and talking, and start acting.
And Paraguay arrives at the concert of nations with a conviction that it does not negotiate: the dignity of the human person must be at the centre of every decision.
That is why we defend freedom, democracy, the sovereignty of States, respect for human rights and the peaceful settlement of disputes.
That is why we uphold human life from conception and recognize the family as the fundamental nucleus of our society.
Because where human dignity is forgotten, humanity itself disappears.
Human dignity, from conception to the end of life, is the foundation of our presence on this earth.
There is an ever more visible distance between the commitments we undertake and the results we achieve.
When that distance grows, trust weakens.
People no longer believe us.
And that trust is not recovered with mere declarations or slogans.
It is recovered by facing problems without fear, and by proposing solutions, offering results.
2. I begin with my neighbourhood: Venezuela The first problem I want to speak to you about here is one that is in my neighbourhood.
Everyone knows it: it is called Venezuela.
Before coming to New York, I visited Caracas, even though Paraguay and Venezuela have their diplomatic relations suspended.
For that reason, my decision to visit the Caribbean country surprised quite a few, and many people have questioned me – even harshly – about that decision.
I therefore take this opportunity to say it loud and clear, with complete clarity: I did not go to Venezuela to validate a regime, I did not go to validate absolutely anything.
No, gentlemen: rather, quite the opposite.
Paraguay loves democracy, and believes that the Venezuelan people deserve democracy as well.
The reason why I went to Venezuela is because for 25 years South American leaders spent their time launching lovely lyrical words, thunderous declarations, themes and slogans about Venezuela.
They were 25 years of watching, waiting and condemning – from a comfortable distance – but without doing anything for the Venezuelan people. We watched. We spoke. But we did not act.
We did nothing.
And meanwhile our Venezuelan brothers and sisters suffered.
That is why I went to Venezuela a few days ago, to take a second step, after the first – difficult but very important – step of the fall of the dictator Maduro.
Because Paraguay can be useful for that second step: Venezuela’s step towards a democratic and pluralistic transition.
Today Venezuela is going through a new reality. The defence of our values cannot mean indifference in the face of that reality.
That is why Paraguay has opened a channel of dialogue with the Venezuelan authorities and is already working, through actions, for a Venezuela where power resides in its only sovereign: the people.
To engage in dialogue is not to renounce principles nor to forget the past. It is to have the courage to look ahead and act. We cannot wait for the United States or some northern power to solve our problems: we have to do it ourselves.
I want for Venezuela what my country achieved after thirty-five years of dictatorship in 1989: a real democratic transition.
I do not want a photo. I do not want a communiqué.
I want, we want, a transition.
A transition with institutions, with security, with an economy and with a people once again integrated into the international community and in our case integrated into MERCOSUR.
Paraguay’s leadership does not confuse dialogue with the indifference. To speak is a way of standing with the Venezuelan people.
It is also a way of jointly combating transnational crime that respects no borders and harms the entire region.
Today I ask all my Latin American brothers and sisters, but also these United Nations: let us unite to help Venezuela, that beautiful country, once again become integrated into the world and have a democratic government that respects human rights.
In the words of the Latin poet Publius, “I am human, nothing human can be foreign to us”: the suffering of the Venezuelan people is the suffering of the Paraguayan people, it is the suffering of all.
And what applies to Venezuela applies perhaps even more forcefully to Nicaragua, to Cuba and to Haiti, countries that have lived too long in the darkness of authoritarianism, violence, and sadness.
Let us bring light to those sister peoples.
Because where there are free elections, there is hope.
But we must not remain at the level of discourse: we have to act.
Let us do so, together.
3. The Middle East, Hormuz and Israel Of course, my region is not the only one with problems.
Problems in the world are everywhere.
Paraguay observes with deep concern what is happening in the Persian Gulf.
When the Strait of Hormuz is closed, the price is not paid by the powers or the richest. It is paid by the most unprotected: the most vulnerable citizens.
The food and energy security of millions of people depends on that passage remaining open.
That is why today I make a fervent appeal for the immediate cessation of attacks, the full opening and free navigation of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, and a return to negotiations.
Human dignity, dear friends, does not change because we change continents: it is always the same.
And it is that human dignity that must guide not only our speeches, but our actions.
4. The coming strait: Taiwan and microchips Hormuz is the problem that confronts us today.
But I want to tell you here that tomorrow the problem may be much worse—far, far worse.
I am referring to the ominous shadows that are gathering in the Indo-Pacific, and particularly in the Taiwan Strait.
What happens there is not a mere regional matter. No, sir.
It affects Japan, all of East and Southeast Asia, and—above all—the world economy.
It affects the microchips that drive industry, defence and artificial intelligence.
Whoever pretends that this is “far away,” or too distant, simply has not understood the twenty-first century.
If oil was the fuel of the twentieth century, microchips are the fuel of the twenty-first century.
What is at stake in that potential conflict is no small matter: the very future of humanity is at stake.
I want to tell you that, in the face of this problem, Paraguay is not neutral.
Paraguay stands—I say this loud and clear—with Taiwan. And it does so not out of convenience, but quite the opposite: it does so because of the deep values that we share. Democracy, the rule of law, human rights and peace.
Seventy years of uninterrupted diplomatic relations is not a mere number, or a mere calculation of expediency: it is a tribute to the true friendship between our peoples.
That is why I reaffirm here today my support for the full and meaningful participation of the Republic of China (Taiwan) in the United Nations and its specialized agencies.
Taiwan has concrete contributions to make to peace, development and human rights. Excluding it does not strengthen the system: it deprives it of capacities that can benefit everyone.
And it is a stain on these United Nations.
But the problem, make no mistake, is not only Taiwan.
What is gathering there, in that area, is far too dangerous for everyone.
Friends: Let us not remain with words, with slogans: let us move to concrete action.
I assure you that, at that negotiating table, of peace, of concord, you will find Paraguay in the front row, ready to help.
5. United Nations... for whom? The Council that is no longer enough But the world’s problems do not end in a single region or place: they go to the very heart of the international system.
The United Nations, I will not be the first or the last to say it, needs renewal, a new impetus.
The fine motto of this Assembly proposes “United Nations for all”.
A fine motto, without a doubt.
But I fear that it is not enough.
That is why I ask you today, respectfully, but firmly: how are we to have United Nations “for all” if it is led by a Security Council of “a few”?
Worse still, it is a Council designed eighty years ago, for another era, for other scenarios, for other situations, and which demonstrates with all too great frequency that it simply does not serves the problems of today.
That original design, a child of its time, has had many achievements. Without a doubt. And today I recognize and celebrate them. We all must do so.
However, as the great Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Bob Dylan would say: “things have changed”.
And the Organization, dear friends, also has to change.
Different problems warrant different solutions.
Otherwise, this beautiful idea, that of the United Nations, will simply be overtaken and limited to being a stage for fine speeches, and few facts for people.
There are those who conclude from all this that multilateralism has failed.
Paraguay reaches a different conclusion: the United Nations remains indispensable. It is the only system that allows all the countries of the world to coexist. But it must be more effective in preventing conflicts, protecting people and ensuring respect for the rules that the States ourselves have agreed upon.
Our vocation for peace is summed up in the phrase of a distinguished Paraguayan, Manuel Gondra: “As we cannot make the just always strong, we must strive to ensure that the strong are always just.”
Paraguay wants to assume greater responsibilities in this system.
But this system, as it stands, does not work.
That is why we believe that the election of the next Secretary-General will be a fundamental decision. The time has come for that leadership to correspond to Latin America and the Caribbean. Our region has a vocation for peace, dialogue and multilateralism, and it has candidates capable of assuming that responsibility.
We need a Secretary-General who restores the political leadership of the Organization, who strengthens preventive diplomacy, who acts before crises become irreversible and who listens to the States and the peoples whom he serves.
The Security Council, in short, must cease to be a photograph of the world of 1945.
It must listen more to this Assembly and not become paralyzed when peace is threatened.
We need a United Nations for 2026, or 2050, not for 1945. So that we may truly be able to deliver for all.
6. An enormous challenge: AI This Assembly also calls on us to manage transformation.
There is no need to say here what the great transformation of our time is. Every great era of humanity has had its driving force. Steam drove the industrial revolution. The transistor drove the digital age. No force of our era is as profound as artificial intelligence.
It is already showing its power in war, in the economy and in everyday life. Unlike tools that merely transmitted what we said, these systems take part in what we decide.
The potential is immense. Paraguay today feeds one hundred million people; with this tool it could feed one billion. It can shorten by years distances that took generations. This transformation can no longer be stopped, and no one should be excluded from it.
We are not blind to the risks; but fear cannot guide us.
Like a child, artificial intelligence repeats what it learned from whoever trained it.
If it learned to deny freedom, that lesson will not arrive as a law that we can debate. It will arrive concealed, in the minor task, in the gesture that no one regards as a decision. Democracy endures so long as the decisions that govern us can be traced back to the will of those who are subject to them. When that thread is cut, the popular will risks being replaced without being defeated.
Protecting that thread does not mean renouncing the benefits. It means not ignoring the risk that matters. Artificial intelligence must serve human dignity and not replace it, as the Holy Father’s recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas reminds us. The values that these systems carry are not a technical limit. They are a decision by whoever trains them. And the future demands of us that that decision be freedom, democracy and equality before the law, and that whoever makes it be accountable for it.
7. A message of optimism, not resignation It might seem that up to this point I have spoken only of an endless number of problems and challenges. That this is a pessimistic speech.
No, dear friends, not at all.
I am simply convinced that the only way to change reality, to have a better world, is first of all to accept reality. To face problems.
Not to sweep them under the rug, beneath speeches.
That is why I also come to deliver a message of optimism.
Things can change, the world can be better, peace is not a pipe dream: it is a real possibility.
And my country can speak of this, because it knows very well the harsh reality of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s phrase: “war is sweet only to those who have never experienced it”.
Paraguay experienced it, all too painfully, in the flesh. We know what happens when multilateralism does not work: people die. The land is stained with blood.
The price is paid not only today, but across generations.
That is why my country knows that multilateralism, dialogue, are the only alternative.
Today I come here to defend all these ideas firmly, so that they become reality.
Extremism in the defense of multilateralism is not a vice, but a virtue.
Let us be extremists, dear friends, in the defense of multilateralism, concord, peace.
Just as Paraguay rose from a bloody war, the world can do so.
That Paraguay which was, after the military hecatomb, a true “open-air cemetery,” today lives a different reality.
Paraguay has risen, and is ready to take its place in the world.
We rose with effort, with openness to the world and with the stubbornness of a people that did not choose its geography, but did choose its destiny.
Today Paraguay is experiencing one of the best economic moments in its history—in fact, the best—and it has become an example for other countries in macroeconomic stability, sustained growth and the fight against poverty.
As a result, in December 2025, Standard & Poor’s awarded us the second investment-grade rating, the first country to achieve that distinction in more than a decade.
In the last quarter of that year, unemployment fell to 3.6 per cent, the lowest level in our records.
Growth only matters if it is felt in households: decent employment is one of the best social policies that a State can offer.
Not only that, Paraguay has reduced poverty to numbers never seen before: in less than twenty years, we have gone down from 58% poverty to 16%, doing so faster than all the countries of the region Because people matter.
Moreover, the future is bright, not only because our electricity matrix is abundant, stable and one hundred per cent renewable, but because our region possesses land, energy, critical minerals and—most importantly—its wonderful people.
8. Closing: Paraguay chooses its destiny Mr. President: As I come to the end of this statement, I want to return to the idea with which I began.
People no longer want only slogans.
They want solutions to their problems.
And, above all, they want peace.
They want freedom, security, democracy, prosperity and opportunities for their children.
And we, who have the responsibility of leading our countries, must rise to those expectations.
Paraguay knows that the road is very difficult, but not impossible.
We believe that it is possible to build a world in which cooperation produces results.
In which democracy is not an empty promise.
In which technology is at the service of humanity.
In which development reaches those who need it most.
And we believe that Paraguay has much to contribute to that future.
We are a country that did not choose its geography, but did choose its destiny.
A country that faced adversity and decided to rise.
A country that has energy, resources, talent and, above all, an unbreakable will to progress.
We are a country that stopped asking what we lack and began to ask how far we can go.
That is giant Paraguay.
The Paraguay that integrates into the world, that opens its doors to opportunities, that defends its sovereignty, that opts for peace, freedom and democracy and that wants to grow without leaving anyone behind.
And that Paraguay has a message for the world: We come to demonstrate what we are capable of doing.
Today we once again choose dialogue over confrontation.
Cooperation over isolation.
Democracy over authoritarianism.
Peace over war.
And development over resignation.
The United Nations will not regain trust because we declare it so in this hall.
We must be firm and unequivocal in the defense of multilateralism, democracy, peace and, above all, human dignity.
And before this Assembly, I want to say it with absolute clarity: Paraguay is ready to do its part.
Because our history taught us to endure and our future calls upon us to build.
Beyond words, there are actions.
Dear brothers and sisters from all over the world: I close these words with a request, with an exhortation, almost a prayer.
“Let us be extremists in the defense of multilateralism, of democracy, of peace, and, above all, of human dignity”.
Only thus will future generations be able to look back and say that we fulfilled our mission, that we restored trust in humanity, that we managed transformation for the better, with a United Nations that delivers for everyone.
Thank you very much.