United Nations General Assembly

Obama Addressing the General Assembly

Whatever your politics are you have to give President Obama credit for being a charismatic and engaging speaker. I was fortunate to see him speak yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

Walking to the UN yesterday morning was eerie. I’m now used to the honking, screaming, bustling, frenetic, yet somehow organized, streets of New York-  it was peculiar to see only media vans and police cruisers on the street, and everywhere else UN dignitaries, staffers, and secret service.

The UN General Assembly Hall was packed and after navigating a mob scene to get into the actual General Assembly hall (people were frantic to get a glimpse of President Obama) I took my seat, put on my translator and sat back to take it all in. I’ve been in the UN before, but this time there was a kind of breathless electricity in the air- everyone was waiting for Obama to speak.  First we heard from the President of Peru Alan Garcia who did a good job, I thought, of giving us concrete results of Peru’s work towards the Millennium Development Goal’s. Since 2001 over 3.5 million people in his country have moved out of poverty, by 2021 Peru hopes that less than 10% of their population will still live in poverty. Based on President Garcia's statistics, it certainly seems that Peru will meet their MDG goals.

 The Chairman of Bosnia, the Prime Minister of Mongolia Nambaryn Enkhbayar and the Prime Minister of Micronesia Manny Mori were less compelling and, based on my interpretation of their speeches, unconvinced that the MDG’s were achievable for their countries. The Prime Minister of Denmark Lars Rasmussen focused on women’s rights as the key to the achievement of the MDG’s while the Deputy Prime Minister of the UK Nick Clegg sternly reprimanded those developed countries who have not kept their promise to financially support the MDG’s- a reprimand that was no doubt aimed at an American audience.

Directly after the UK Deputy Prime Minister's speech, Obama strode onto the stage, amid raucous applause, shook the UN Secretariat General Ban Ki Moon’s Hand and began a 30 minute speech entirely from memory. Obama’s speech was filled with ‘classic American rhetoric’ (as one critic I just read put it) but this American was eating it up. He talked about the need to stop creating dependency through development and to start actually creating development through the promotion of entrepreneurship, economic prosperity and reducing corruption. Although these are the typical American lines when it comes to dealing with poverty, what heartened me, and made Obama’s words take on a new vibrancy, was the fact his administration is now launching a new US Global Development Policy.  This is the first of its kind! With this policy it is my sincere hope that Obama has started walking the walk- instead of talking the talk like many of his predecessors.

Now am I sceptical about exactly what this means? Yes. Do I think that broad political statements get lost in the bureaucracy and the political power games of Washington? Sure do.

So why am I so darn excited?

The more the world’s leaders take active steps towards ending poverty:

The UN at Dusk After the General Assembly

1.        The more the people of the nations around the world hold their leaders accountable for their promises.

2.       The more people around the world become educated about development.

3.       And, the more people around the world organize themselves to create change.

While there is a place for governments and their leaders to create change I believe that the responsibility for change ultimately rests with us- the people.

That is why Eat So They Can is so important. When you have an ESTC dinner you are joining a movement of people who believe poverty is wrong, and that poverty can be defeated. You are joining the Millennium Development Goal Movement and all of those leaders at the UN that are honestly working to create meaningful paths out of poverty for their people.

Thank you for joining us and the tens of thousands of others this October who are joining the fight.