Mr Secretary General, Fellow Delegates,
The Pact we have undersigned is the result of complex negotiations for which I want to thank the President of the General Assembly, the negotiators, and all the Member States.

The phase that now begins – the Pact’s implementation – is even more complex and more crucial.

The challenges that history has placed before us are manifold and multiform: climate change, social and economic inequalities, humanitarian and health crises, transnational crime, and armed conflicts - starting with Russia’s unacceptable war of aggression on the sovereign nation of Ukraine - that make international security increasingly precarious. Faced with such a complex scenario, we have no choice but to act.
I think it is clear to all that we live in a time of crisis; yet, crises always conceal opportunities. The word crisis, after all, derives from the ancient Greek term krisis, meaning choice, decision. Crises force us to question ourselves, to take sides, and do not allow for hesitation.

We all know that no State can effectively master current challenges on its own, and that is why Italy is a committed supporter of multilateralism and of its most representative institution, the United Nations – the forum where each and every voice is heard, where we are called to learn, to understand each other and to respect each other.
Of course, any organisation is effective if its rules are fair and mutually agreed. That is why we are convinced that any reform of the UN governance, particularly regarding its Security Council, cannot disregard the principles of equality, democracy, and representativeness.

A reform makes sense if performed for everyone and not just for some. We are not interested in creating new hierarchies, and we do not believe there are Class A Nations and Class B Nations. There are simply Nations, with their own histories, specificities, and citizens, who all have the same rights, because individuals are born free and equal.
This also means we must think about cooperation between Nations in a new way. Italy has done so, for example, with the Mattei Plan for Africa, an investment plan designed to cooperate with African Nations through an approach that is neither paternalistic nor charitable or predatory, but based on respect and the right for each one of us to compete on equal terms.
It is our recipe to promote the development of a continent too often undervalued, build its stability, and finally guarantee one right that until now has been denied to too many young people – the right not to have to emigrate.

And when talking about development, we cannot fail to address the new frontiers of technological innovation, starting with generative artificial intelligence — a phenomenon on which, I am afraid, there is still insufficient awareness.
Artificial intelligence is, first and foremost, a great multiplier. But the question we need to answer is: what do we want to multiply? To put it bluntly, if this multiplier were used to cure still incurable diseases, then it would contribute to the common good. But if, on the other hand, that multiplier were to be used to further upset global balances, then the resulting scenarios would be potentially catastrophic.
Machines will not answer these questions. We can do it; politics must do it. And it is politics that must guarantee that artificial intelligence remains human-controlled and human-centric.
These are all issues that we address in this Pact, and they are all issues that Italy placed at the core of the agenda of its G7 Presidency this year.

This is the role of multilateralism. Not a club where people gather to write useless documents crammed with good intentions, but – rather – the forum where we must tackle decision-making urgency, and where ideas must become actions, combining the different sensibilities.
We must never forget that the decisions we make today will shape the world where our children will be living tomorrow.
As William Stanley Merwin, one of the leading American poets of the post-war era, said: “We are the echo of the future”.

Thank you.

[Courtesy translation]

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