Prime Minister Edi Rama delivers speech to UN: With light eyes

For his part, Prime Minister Rama in his greeting to the attendees stressed that “Membership in the Security Council is a historic event for Albania, marking another fundamental stone on our path to transforming our aspirations as a nation and contributing to making the world a better place for us and for all. ”

The prime minister's speech was the lead of peace, dialogue, and values. Albania's mission, Rama stressed, is to lead its voice, values and norms to the Security Council as a contribution to peace. The prime minister stressed that the Council is designed to raise the voice and intervene in the service of values when flagrant violations occur.

“We are committed to bringing our voice, values and norms to the joint work of the Security Council as a contribution to peace. We want to share with others living experiences, lessons learned.”, Rama said.

Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Olta Gacka, president of the UN General Assembly Abdulla Shahid, Albania's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ferit Hoxha, ambassadors of UN member states, representatives of the Albanian community in the US, etc. The president of the UN General Assembly expressed his congratulations on choosing Albania as a member of the Security Council for the period 2022-2023. I have no doubt that Albania will further build work on its long-term commitment to peace and security and the history of its powerful engagement with numerous UN bodies to strengthen the work of the Council. ” Shahid said during the ceremony.

Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Olta Xhacka, in her welcoming address, praised the mandate as a responsibility and great privilege for the country. For the first time, 66 years after becoming a member of the UN, Albania has the opportunity to sit at the UN Security Council. This is certainly a great responsibility. This is no doubt a great privilege. But this is at the same time, a very special moment in the history of modern Albania. It shows how far we have traveled and how far our country and our people have arrived. ”- Foreign Minister Jacka said.

During his visit to the United States, Prime Minister Edi Rama was also received by the UN Secretary - General, and today there will also be a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The Complete Word of Eddie Rama

Thank you, sir. President General Assembly for your good words. By the way, you're the boss of many of these in this room that honor us with their presence. Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, good evening to all the countrymen!

Membership in the Security Council is an event of historic importance for Albania, marking another fundamental stone on our path of transformation to fulfill our aspirations as a nation and contributing to making the world a better place for us and for all. Let me start by going out of the script and being blunt, despite the advice of the ambassador and others:

Like nothing else but for a gathering like this, where so many distinguished friends and guests are present to share this moment with us, I think the Security Council mandate is worth it. Thank you for being here. Only an unbridled imagination would have the courage to dream of something like this just three decades ago. I even doubt that even the most rampant imagination would not have been so wild enough to dream of it three decades ago.

At the time, Albania was a bunker in the dark. For almost half a century, she crawled under one of Europe's most oppressive communist regimes, which made our country, I have to say, North Korea of Europe. The dictatorship was replaced by calling people to what human nature needs is an internal need: freedom, equality, democracy and the rule of law. Many times the wheel of history moves in strange directions. For us Albanians, the wake came quite late, but we kept our eyes on the light and since then we have walked in a single direction, one of freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights and dignity, development and reforms.

Since this time, the search of the country deserved in the region and Europe has remained our compass, even in the most difficult moments on our difficult path towards a free and democratic society, towards the family we want to join, the European family we belong to.

The world has changed and transformed over the past 66 years, since the day we joined the UN. Many countries and societies have seen their lives radically change, but I can no doubt say that Albania's transformation is one of the most impressive and influential, to the point that we tend to agree with friends who tell us that over the past three decades, Albania has been transformed more than over the last three centuries.

This is our balance, which we are proud of and we want to improve further. Nowadays, we note that the values we once took for granted as aspirations to achieve have been puzzled, but we who have survived dark times do not harbor such doubts because we know what the alternative to these values is. We have placed international law and human rights at the centre of our agenda for the mandate of the Security Council. We see them as the priorities of the most powerful organism in the world.

I don't know how many of you in this room or outside of it would either agree with me that wherever human rights are implemented, wherever women are respected and empowered, wherever the needs of the citizens are placed first, there is sustainable development and real progress, but for us, human rights are based on key issues of peace and security. Recognition of rights universalism requires a wise balance between conflicting principles - the sovereignty of nations that we must respect and the human right to protect which we must endure.

The Security Council is designed to voice up and intervene in the service of these values when flagrant violations occur. For us, the challenge is how the Council can intervene in an intelligent, reflective and timely way to prevent massacres, stop conflicts and ensure lasting peace and security.

No one doubts the power of the Security Council. Our challenge is to make right what is strong and to make what is right strong. For a body as powerful as the Council, it cannot be fair, so we must join justice, as there will be no peace without justice.

Security cannot be resolved, let alone last, without justice being established. So our opinion is that the Security Council should seek the achievement of peace and security, but also the establishment of justice, accountability. Through accountability, we can go towards reconciliation, which cements lasting peace.

This is also the task of a small country like Albania. We don't bring material power to the Security Council at least, not now but it's not what the Security Council lacks. Nor is it just the power that the Council needs to solve the most pressing challenges to world peace and security today.

We are committed to bringing our voice, values and norms to the joint work of the Security Council as a contribution to peace. We want to share experiences, lessons taken.

Our direct way to contribute to the relief of the suffering of those in need has been to give what we have, when we could, when we had to do it: we have opened homes and hearts to those who need salvation and shelter; whether the Jews during the Holocaust, when Albania became the only country that had more Jews after the war than before it or half a million Kosovars who fled from the ethnic cleansing of Slobodan Milosevic's cruel regime; or thousands of members of MEK, who have been sheltered safely in Albania, and finally thousands of Afghans who escaped from the rebels.

We do not seek credit for this. It belongs to every human being, regardless of belief, religion, ethnicity, gender, or any orientation.

This isn't a slogan. It's a living practice. We don't act by this code of honour because we can, but just because we have to be part of what we are as Albanians and what we want to be our children.

Dear friends, in our long migration until we have found our way - war, conquest, dictatorship, isolation, extreme poverty. The only thing we haven't experienced and there's a fundamental reason for that is religious conflict.

The reason is that we have learned from experience to put the joint first and the individual next. We've managed to believe in honest dialogue or, to better say, “the development of” horizons. Dialogue, for us, is a way to achieve mutual understanding, respect and mutual acceptance, without which peace would remain a welcome, an elusive aspirin.

We will be able to fight the root causes of violent conflict by accepting each other and ourselves in others. After all, we're all a community of destiny. Our future in this one unique place called earth is ultimately linked to our ability to understand and learn to live with our differences, shared aspirations, peace, and dignity.

This is the task we take over to preserve that bright horizon at the foundation of the Security Council's work.

Thank you for being here with us tonight, at this special meeting and thank you for giving some of the love of today to Albania. Thank you. /abcnews. al