1) It is necessary to insist on the necessary and urgent transition from a culture of imposition, domination, violence and war to a culture of encounter, conciliation, alliance and peace. This is the great objective of the United Nations Organization founded in October 1945. Returning to the great design that President Roosevelt made of the United Nations System 75 years ago, the then premature "We, the Peoples" with which the Charter lucidly begins is now possible.

Progressively marginalized by neoliberalism, it is now urgent to convene an Extraordinary Session of the United Nations General Assembly to decide, with the participation of all countries, a new concept of security and the most urgent measures to face, before it is too late, the great global challenges represented by environmental deterioration, the nuclear threat, pandemics, supremacism of all kinds, the growing social gap, plutocratic governance, in such a way as to ensure the equal dignity of all human beings and the full exercise of their distinctive faculties.

As it has been since its inception in 1945, UNESCO is also a major player in the new "take-off" of the United Nations system. The "voice of the people" - now audible and unheard - will call for radical changes to avoid reaching the point of no return.

2) Democratic multilateralism is urgent and it has been a huge mistake to replace the United Nations with plutocratic groups (G6, G7, G8, G20) and ethical values with mercantile ones. Every day thousands of people die of hunger (most of them children from one to five years of age) while 4 billion dollars are invested in arms and military expenses. The human tragedy of migration flows forced by extreme poverty is the result of the drastic decrease in development funding. The reduction of international solidarity is another major challenge that must be addressed without delay.

3) All human beings are equal in dignity: that is the key? That's the challenge! Now we can express ourselves freely thanks to modern digital technology, ceasing to be inoperative witnesses to become full citizens who participate and defend their points of view with firmness and effectiveness, ceasing to be distracted, misinformed, managed by the omnipotent and omnipresent influence of the "great dominion" (military, financial, energy and media).

4) Now people can participate, the basis of democracy. They already know what is happening on a planetary scale... and they become citizens of the world. And women, with their inherent qualities, are finally on the stage. Finally on the political stage. At last progressively equal...

The time is coming when, together, we will be able to build the defences of peace - as the UNESCO Constitution mandates us to do - based on justice, on the equal dignity of all human beings, on freedom of expression, "on the ability of every human being to enjoy the dignity of the human person, to enjoy the dignity of the human person and to participate in the work of others".

5) It is essential to apply the lessons of the past in time. To remember after the storm what we could have done and did not do. In this regard, the scientific community has an irreplaceable role to play in ensuring that appropriate measures are adopted in a timely manner in the face of global threats of an ecological, health and nutritional nature... It is today an inescapable and urgent responsibility to halt the progressive deterioration of ecological conditions and the quality of life on Earth.

6) The most serious aspect of what is happening nowadays is that the irreversibility of processes that can affect without remedying the conditions necessary for a normal life is trivialized.

We are currently facing a viral pandemic - Covid-19 - and it is imperative not to forget the many lessons of this global crisis. While the world is still partially "confined"... preparations are already underway to ensure that, when so much should change, nothing does.

7) We are at a turning point. It is necessary that we all manifest ourselves in order to constitute the authentic democracies that are necessary on a local and global scale. The growing social inequalities, the deterioration of the environment, the cultural, conceptual and moral debacle... all call for a radical modification of current trends. There are times when it is necessary to make real, with imagination and fearlessness, what is judged inappropriate by those anchored in inertia, in insisting on applying old remedies for new pathologies. Every good ruler must take into account, in the first place, the processes that can lead to irreparable damage.

8) The present moment calls for our intergenerational solidarity. It is imperative that agreements be reached to avoid, what would be an unthinkable historical mistake, points of no return. President Obama urged action without delay, saying that "our generation is the first to face the challenge of climate change and the last that can solve it. And Pope Francis, in his Encyclical Laudato Si on the ecological situation, declares that "we must act today because tomorrow could be too late".

9) In the Anthropocene, guaranteeing the habitability of the Earth and dignified life for all human beings constitutes an essential responsibility because the foundation of all human rights is equal dignity, regardless of gender, skin colour, belief, ideology, age...

10) What can we, the "peoples", the billions of citizens who are relegated to the role of extras, do? We can speak, we can use our voice to make ourselves, first, heard, and then listened to. We know and we must dare, because if not, according to a phrase of Albert Camus, we would expose ourselves to being despised by future generations, because "we can dare so much, we dare so little".

11) It is time for action, for opening new furrows and planting seeds of love, it is time for hope, for active resistance. As the great Mario Benedetti recommended to his son:

Son,
don't give up,
please,
don't give in.
... Because every day
is a new beginning.