Speech by President Lula at the G7 working session: "Towards a Peaceful, Stable and Prosperous World"

Hiroshima is a propitious setting for a reflection on the catastrophic consequences of all types of conflict. This reflection is urgent and necessary. Today, the risk of nuclear war is at its highest level since the height of the Cold War.

In 1945, the UN was founded to prevent a new World War. However, the multilateral mechanisms for conflict prevention and resolution no longer work.

The world is no longer the same. Traditional wars continue to break out, and we see worrying setbacks in the nuclear non-proliferation regime, which necessarily will have to include the dimension of disarmament.

Nuclear weapons are not a source of security, but an instrument of mass destruction that denies our own humanity and threatens the continuity of life on Earth.

As long as nuclear weapons exist, there will always be the possibility of their use.

For this reason, Brazil was actively engaged in the negotiations of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which we hope to be able to ratify soon.

In line with the United Nations Charter, we strongly condemn the use of force as a means of dispute settlement. We condemn the violation of Ukraine's territorial integrity.

At the same time, as fighting continues, the human suffering, loss of life and destruction of homes increase.

I have repeated to exhaustion that it is necessary to talk about peace. No solution will last unless it is based on dialogue. We need to work to open room for negotiations.

At the same time, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the challenges to peace and security currently plaguing the world go far beyond Europe.

Israelis and Palestinians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Kosovars and Serbs need peace. Yemenis, Syrians, Libyans and Sudanese all deserve to live in peace. These conflicts should receive the same degree of international attention.

In Haiti, we need to act quickly to alleviate the suffering of a population torn apart by tragedy. The scourge to which the Haitian people is subject is the result of decades of indifference to the country's real needs. For years, Brazil has been saying that Haiti's problem is not just one of security, but, above all, one of development.

The gap between these challenges and the global governance we have continues to grow. The lack of a reform of the Security Council is the unavoidable component of the problem.

The Council is more paralyzed than ever. Permanent members continue the long tradition of waging unauthorized wars, whether in pursuit of territorial expansion or in pursuit of regime change.

Even without being able to prevent or resolve conflicts through the Council, some countries insist on expanding its agenda more and more, bringing in new themes that should be dealt with in other bodies of the UN system.

The result is that today we have a Council that does not deal with the old problems, nor the current ones, much less the future ones.

Brazil has lived in peace with its neighbors for over 150 years. We made Latin America a region without nuclear weapons. We are also proud of having built, together with African neighbors, a zone of peace and nuclear non-proliferation in the South Atlantic.

We are witnessing the emergence of a multipolar order that, if well received and nurtured, can benefit all.

The multipolarity that Brazil seeks is based on the primacy of International Law and the promotion of multilateralism.

Re-enacting the Cold War would be foolish.

Dividing the world into East and West or North and South would be as anachronistic as it is innocuous.

It is necessary to break with the logic of exclusive alliances and false clashes of civilizations.

It is urgent to reinforce the idea that cooperation, respecting differences, is the right path to follow.

Thank you very much.