Remarks by the President of the General Assembly,
H.E Ms Annalena Baerbock
United Nations Sunday at St. John the Divine Cathedral
Sunday, 14 September 2025
[As Delivered]
Dean Winnie Varghese.
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is not only an honor to join you here today as we mark the beginning of the 80th session of the United Nations.
But we will need the spirit in this room to carry us through the upcoming session, difficult as it may be.
Because God gives us hope.
And hope is precious.
A precious commodity in these times
Yet hope is not pure optimism.
Hope is not the belief that God will solve everything.
Rather, it is the belief that there is a higher power watching over us.
That there is a community, like here today, where we are always welcome, where we always belong to.
And as I¡¯ve learned when I entered this wonderful house of God – that this was really the house of welcoming and belonging.
For every person no matter where they came from.
For every immigrant.
Making clear that we are stronger together
I think this is really the spirit we really need for the future: belonging, for everybody.
Because in these challenging times in our world — as bombs continue to fall, children continue to go without food, and families continue to be ripped apart – hope is especially precious.
When we look at Gaza, where people are searching through their destroyed homes to find their children
When we still have families not knowing where their beloved ones are being held captive by Hamas
Grandfathers who are hiding every night in their apartments in Kharkiv and other places in Ukraine not knowing when the next missile is going to hit
Women having to see their daughters being raped while fleeing through Sudan.
This is the world we live in,
And sometimes it is hard to hope
But without hope, we will resign ourselves to despair.
But with hope, we can see the promise, however faint, of a better tomorrow.
So how can we find hope in these trying times?
How can the United Nations become a source of hope again?
Because not only this very church – religion in general – but also our United Nations itself, was created as a place of hope.
A place of hope where we overcome divides, learn from our past history, and know, deep down, that we are one human family.
That we are Better Together.
A place where we protect and defend these fundamental truths of humanity:
That human dignity is universal.
That we are not merely individuals but part of a community.
And that we cannot leave any member of the human family to face the hardships of life alone: whether war, hunger, poverty, illness, or natural disasters.
These are truths affirmed in every scripture.
And these are the promises the United Nations made to the world 80 years ago.
Today, even as conflict and crises plague our planet, the United Nations reminds us of the value of unity, fellowship, and cross-cultural collaboration as cornerstones not only of multilateralism, but of humanity itself.
It was that unity, belief, and hope which brought our grandfathers and aalso a few grandmothers together to San Francisco 80-years ago amidst the ashes of war.
Unity brought us the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Charter and our collective promise to turn catastrophe into cooperation, despair into determination.
Unity in the belief that even in our darkest hours, we can do something better together.
So let us find that sense of unity once again.
It is in this spirit that as the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations I have set out the theme for the upcoming 80th Session as ¡°Better Together¡±.
This theme reflects the fundamental understanding, deep within us, that only together can we summon the hope, the courage, and the will to fulfill the promises that these United Nations made to the world 80 years ago.
However, we must be frank with ourselves: we are no doubt facing strong headwinds, backlash.
We are not delivering fully on the promises the United Nations made 80-years ago.
But this is not the moment to resign ourselves to despair.
Let us not relearn the hard lessons again.
If parents in Gaza can wake up, if girls in Afghanistan denied from every human right can stand up? in the darkest hours of life, and push forward, then so can we.
We owe it to them. To the people around the world
We must not only recommit to the promises we made but also reform the way we work to deliver.
This is the task ahead for the United Nations.
To come together, especially in the moments we would like to give up, to show the world that multilateralism still works. That we work even harder to uphold the principles of the United Nations.
Therefore this 80th Session of the General Assembly is no ordinary one.
The crises before us are multiplying and deepening at alarming speed.
So we must recommit to hope.
We must deliver hope.
We must pray for hope.
But prayer cannot be passive.
So let us not only pray for problems to vanish.
But instead, let us pray for the courage to confront them.
Let us pray to act, even when action is hard.
Let us pray to cooperate, even when division is easier.
Let us pray to uphold dignity, even when it is under assault.
Let us pray, then, that this session is remembered not only for its milestone anniversary of 80 years of the United Nations.
But as the moment when we summoned extraordinary resolve.
Equal to the extraordinary challenges we face.
When we turned again to the wisdom of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Charter.
And found in it the strength to be indeed better together.