Speaking in New York, Ghana’s President pressed world leaders to treat conflicts in Europe, the Middle East and Africa by the same standard.
President John Dramani Mahama has told the United Nations General Assembly that talking, not fighting, remains the way out of the world's hardest conflicts, and that no country or people should be destroyed in the name of war.
"No human civilisation deserves to be annihilated, certainly not a member state of the United Nations," he said during his address at the 81st session of the General Assembly in New York. His remarks were reported by Ghanaian Times.
The General Assembly is the yearly gathering where heads of state and government of UN member countries speak from the same podium in New York. It is one of the few platforms where a country of Ghana's size can put its position directly before the rest of the world.
One standard for all conflicts
A central theme of the President's address was consistency. He argued that conflicts in Europe, the Middle East and Africa should be judged and handled by the same rules, rather than some receiving urgent global attention while others are left to run.
That point matters for African states in particular, where long-running wars often attract far less diplomatic energy than crises elsewhere.
Solidarity with the Sahel
President Mahama also called for solidarity with countries under pressure from terrorism, singling out the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). The AES is the bloc formed by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, Ghana's northern neighbours in the wider West African region. Armed groups operating across the Sahel have driven displacement and insecurity in recent years, and the spillover risk to coastal states such as Ghana has been a standing concern for security planners.
Middle East and the world economy
On the Middle East, the President urged a return to the negotiating table. He linked the fighting there to economic pain felt well beyond the region, saying, "The current Middle East crisis is having a deleterious effect on the world economy."
He closed that section of his argument with a statement of principle: "I believe that dialogue can resolve even the most intractable of problems."
Why it matters for Ghanaians
For Ghanaians at home, instability in global energy and food markets feeds directly into fuel prices, the cedi and the cost of imported goods. For Ghanaians in the United States and elsewhere abroad, the President's UN appearance is one of the clearest annual signals of how Accra positions itself on the world stage, and of the arguments Ghana is making on behalf of Africa in multilateral forums.
The address forms part of Ghana's participation in the current General Assembly session in New York.
