// LEADERS' VIEWS
GIORGIA MELONI, PRIME MINISTER, ITALY
Rebuilding trust and reforming global governance for a changing world W e are living through a fast-moving and is all the more true for States. Israel has
for Africa. Over the last three years, we have launched our cooperation plan with Africa and extended its reach to include 14 nations. We have built collaborations with the United Nations, the European Union and its Global Gateway, the G7, the African Union and the African Development Bank, international financial institutions and many bilateral partners, including the United Arab Emirates, whom I would like to thank. This complementarity gave us the honour of co-organising the third United Nations Food Systems Summit together with Ethiopia in July this year, as well as the responsibility of playing an active part in the major ‘Lobito Corridor’ infrastructure project between Angola and Zambia and the possibility to build public-private partnerships that attract investments and ensure concrete results. This is what is happening in Algeria, where we will recover over 36,000 hectares of desert to be used for agriculture, generating benefits for more than 600,000 people. This is what is happening with the opening of the AI Hub for Sustainable Development, which will involve hundreds of African start-ups in the development of artificial intelligence. This is also what is happening with the extension to eastern Africa of the Blue Raman cable to connect India to European economies via the Middle East and the Mediterranean… This path, however, has no choice but to address an issue that can be put off no longer: the debt of African nations. Over the next ten years, Italy plans to convert the entire amount of debt for the economically least developed nations, based on World Bank criteria, and to reduce that of medium- and low-income nations by 50%. Over these ten years, the complete operation will enable us to convert over EUR 235 million of debt into development projects to be rolled out locally. Address to the United Nations General Assembly, 24 September 2025
crossed that line, with a large-scale war that is involving the Palestinian civilian population beyond measure. And it is by crossing that line
and complex period in time that is rich in opportunities but also, perhaps above all, fraught with dangers. We are suspended between war and peace. According to the Global Peace Index 2024, 56 armed conflicts are currently taking place around the world – the highest number since the Second World War… The scenario we are facing is what Pope Francis described with remarkable effectiveness as a “third world war” fought “in pieces”. Among the main ongoing conflicts, Three and a half years ago, on 24 February 2022, Moscow decided to attack Kyiv. I do not think there was enough reflection on the consequences of that choice and on a point which I consider fundamental: the Russian Federation, a permanent member of the Security Council, deliberately trampled on Article 2 of the UN Charter by violating the integrity and political independence of another sovereign State, intending to annex its territory. Still today, it is not showing any willingness to seriously accept any invitation to sit down for peace talks… It is no coincidence that Hamas there is of course the Russian Federation’s large-scale war of aggression against Ukraine. took advantage of the weakening of this architecture to launch its attack against Israel on 7 October 2023. The ferocity and brutality of that attack – the hunting down of defenceless civilians – drove Israel to what was, in principle, a legitimate reaction, because every State and every people has the right to defend itself. However, a reaction to an aggression must always respect the principle of proportionality. This is true for individuals
that the Jewish state has ended up violating humanitarian norms, causing a slaughter of civilians. A choice that Italy has repeatedly described as unacceptable, and one that will lead us to vote in favour of some of the sanctions against Israel proposed by the European Commission… In order to be effective, it is not just institutions we need to reform, for we are facing a change of era, and this demands a profound revision of all the tools we have to govern relations between nations and defend the rights of individuals, including International Conventions. I am referring, for example, to the conventions governing migration and asylum. These rules were established at a time when mass irregular migration did not exist and nor did human traffickers. These conventions are no longer current in this context and, when they are interpreted in an ideological and unidirectional way by politicised judges, they end up trampling on the law, rather than upholding it… The international community must come together in fighting the phenomenon of human trafficking. As is the case for other international institutions such as the European Union, the United Nations cannot look the other way or end up protecting criminals in the name of supposed civil rights… A new model for cooperation between nations is also needed, but building it requires humility, awareness and trust in the partner you have in front of you. Italy is trying to do its part in this regard too, above all with its Mattei Plan
20 // G20 SOUTH AFRICA: THE JOHANNESBURG SUMMIT 2025
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