1. While we speak of peace, security and international cooperation, thousands of people are dying as victims of war, hunger, violence, disease and injustice. It would seem that we have lost our sense of humanity.
2. It is not a future tragedy. It is happening now while we are here.
3. At this moment, there will be mothers, fathers, children and families asking themselves something that is neither abstract, nor diplomatic, nor geopolitical. It is an elementary question, with the deepest humanity: Where are the United Nations?
4. That question, perhaps more than any other, is the reason why we are here. And for that reason I would like to ask those of us in this Assembly, do we today have an Organization that continues to be relevant and has the conviction to confront the challenges of our humanity?
5. We are living in an extremely complex era in which changes and challenges occur in a matter of seconds. These changes and challenges overwhelm us.
6. But the most vulnerable, the voiceless, those who suffer the most, yearn for something much simpler; but fundamental: peace, security, employment, and a dignified future for their children.
7. And that is the greatest contradiction of our time.
8. We have more capabilities than ever, but also challenges that no State can confront on its own.
9. As the United Nations, we have to commit ourselves and work to redefine the international order so that it prioritizes the common well-being of humanity.
10. We need a multilateralism that is capable of listening, but also of deciding; that preserves principles, that respects the sovereignty of States, but that understands that no State can resolve on its own problems that no longer recognize borders.
11. Because the credibility of the United Nations is not built only with resolutions. Its legitimacy is attained when the Organization is truly capable of preserving and guaranteeing a dignified future for people.
12. And this is something that El Salvador knows very well.
13. For decades, my country was known for a reality that seemed impossible to change. The entrails of violence penetrated deeply into our society.
14. An entire nation resigned itself to the fact that that reality was what we were condemned to live.
15. After decades of institutional indifference, in 2019 the Salvadoran people placed their trust in Nayib Bukele, a young leader who dared, like no one before, to challenge that to which an entire generation believed itself condemned and to transform the country’s profound reality.
16. El Salvador went from recording homicide rates of 103 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants, among the highest in the world, to reaching radically different levels, 1.3 per 100 thousand inhabitants, becoming one of the benchmark cases most closely watched internationally in the area of security.
17. The International Monetary Fund has indicated that the improvement in security has strengthened the country’s confidence and economic activity, and estimates that the Salvadoran economy will grow by 4.5 per cent in 2026, driven by investment, private consumption, remittances, tourism and capital inflows.
18. However, it would be a mistake to reduce that transformation to a figure.
19. Because behind a figure there are faces.
a. There is a mother who no longer fears that her son will return home. b. There is a shopkeeper who can open his business.
c. There is a worker who can move through his city. d. There is a child who can play on a street that previously did not belong to him.
20. And there is something even deeper. A society that recovered hope, grounded in the possibility of imagining a different future.
21. That is what recovering security really means. a. It does not mean only reducing crime. b. It means giving space back to freedom.
22. And when a society recovers the freedom to walk, to work, to undertake, and to live without fear, a second transformation begins: the recovery of confidence.
23. That explains why El Salvador is today a point of reference for countries seeking support and answers in the face of their own security challenges.
24. Not because our path can be copied mechanically. There is no universal recipe. Each nation has its history.
25. However, there is a lesson that we believe can be universal; no nation should be obliged to accept collapse and governmental incapacity to manage as its destiny.
26. El Salvador does not come to this Assembly to say that we have solved all our problems. That would be false.
27. Today we come to say something much deeper.
28. With determination, we have shown that a problem that seemed irreversible can be confronted and transformed.
29. And I want to be clear; in keeping with the vision of my President Bukele, security is not the final destination, it is the point of departure.
30. In El Salvador we have placed education at the centre of our national transformation, because we believe that transforming a school is, ultimately, transforming a life. Transforming the homeland.
31. With initiatives such as Two Schools a Day, we are comprehensively renewing public education from early childhood through secondary education.
32. In health, we have infrastructure, modernized equipment and created digital care through Doctor SV in order to bring quality care to every forgotten corner of our country.
renewed
33. The vision of our First Lady, Gabriela Rodríguez de Bukele, is profoundly human. That every girl, boy and young person may grow up in freedom, fully develop their potential and have the real opportunity to build the life project they choose.
34. Now our efforts as a country are focused on turning security into investment; investment into employment; employment into social mobility; technology into opportunities; education into capabilities; and stability into prosperity.
35. By leading, together with Estonia, the global dialogue on the governance of artificial intelligence, El Salvador reaffirmed that this technology must expand capacities and create opportunities to build environments capable of competing in the future.
36. The transformation my country is experiencing has taught us that security, development and human dignity are not separate compartments.
a. Without security, development becomes fragile. b. Without development, security can hardly be sustainable. c. And without dignity, neither of the two has any true meaning.
37. The international community must understand that solving global challenges goes beyond a resolution on paper.
38. A multilateralism that does not force countries to choose permanently between sovereignty and cooperation.
39. Today, we have before us a historic and inexcusable challenge. To make multilateralism once again synonymous with “capacity for action”.
40. El Salvador considers that the reform of the United Nations should not be limited to reorganizing structures.
41. We need an agile, representative, effective and transparent Organization; one that is capable of resolving, with the speed that contemporary problems demand, contemporary problems. Enough already with conformism. Enough already with personal and national interests prevailing over global needs and crises. Enough already with bureaucracy.
42. We expect this same commitment from the next Secretary-General of the United Nations.
43. A leadership with absolute independence, with capacity for dialogue, with moral authority, with knowledge of the international reality and with the will and reforming conviction for the benefit of humanity.
44. In a short and historic period of 7 years, El Salvador has taken a firm step toward changing its reality, recovering its security, its spaces, its confidence and its dignity, while also fighting for its sovereignty.
45. Our sovereignty is not negotiable. Our sovereignty is untouchable. We are determined to defend it, because it has cost us too much blood to recover it. I am convinced that each and every one of my compatriots would be willing to defend our Homeland and our sovereignty with the greatest commitment and sacrifice.
46. Today, El Salvador wishes to place before this Assembly 4 fundamental lessons: a. That nations are not condemned to repeat their past eternally.
b. That difficult problems are not necessarily impossible problems.
c. That the size of a country does not determine the size of its responsibility.
d. And that the future does not necessarily belong to those who have more power.
47. It also belongs to those who dare to transform with determination.
48. El Salvador’s invitation to this General Assembly is simple.
a. Let us not resign ourselves. b. Let us not accept that war, poverty and violence are inevitable.
c. Let us not accept that this Organization is condemned to immobility.
d. And let us not accept that the differences between nations are more powerful than what we have in common.
49. Today we must ask ourselves a vital question for the present and future of our Nations: What world do we want to build so that humanity may prosper?
50. El Salvador has already made a decision about its own future; and I do not say this lightly.
51. Today we come to say it loud and clear: not with words, but with deeds. Transformation is possible. We are doing it and we will not take a step back.
Thank you very much.