Deputy UN Secretary-General Amina Mohammed has thanked attendees at New York’s Global Citizen Festival for raising their voices for justice and “refusing to give up on a better world.”
The music event, held in Central Park at the close of the General Assembly’s high-level week, is the flagship initiative of Global Citizen, the world’s largest movement against extreme poverty.
This year’s line-up featured international stars including Shakira, Cardi B and Rosé.
Mohammed, addressing the audience, reminded them that just five years remain to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), described as a blueprint for a fairer future for humanity and the planet.
“We still have a ways to go. We’re moving, but it’s just not fast enough and the clock is ticking really loud,” she said.
She emphasised that 4.3 trillion dollars was needed annually to finance the Goals and ensure no one was left behind.
*“What really matters is to give peace a chance for the women in Sudan, for the children in Gaza, for the people in Ukraine.
“We need peace everywhere,”* she declared, calling for safeguards to prevent artificial intelligence from creating new divides, for women’s inclusion in decision-making, for quality education and for environmental protection “from the Amazon to the Congo and to every corner of the world.”
The deputy UN chief urged festival-goers to find solutions where others saw dead ends and to use their voices to “cut through the noise, demanding for everyone to do better and not accepting the globalisation of indifference.”
(NAN)