Gustavo Petro’s 2025 UNGA Address: “Words Are No Longer Enough”

🇨🇴 On September 23, 2025, Colombian President Gustavo Petro delivered his final address to the United Nations General Assembly. He placed Gaza at the center, declaring that “diplomacy has ended its role” and calling for a Uniting for Peace resolution to bypass the Security Council and establish an international armed force to liberate Palestine. Petro directly confronted Donald Trump, accusing him of complicity in genocide in Palestine and warning that the same genocidal violence is now being exported into Latin America.

Over nearly 45 minutes, Petro denounced war crimes, the genocide in Gaza, cruel immigration policies, America’s so-called war on drugs, and global climate inaction — remarks that prompted the U.S. delegation to walk out.

The speech begins:

“This is my last speech here as president. It is my fourth.

In the first, I told this Assembly that a conflict was likely to erupt, both in Ukraine and in Palestine. I called for a peace conference. But those of us without bombs or big budgets are not listened to here.

Four years later, the horrific situation in Palestine has shown me that the same — or nearly the same — could happen in the Colombian Caribbean, when missiles are fired at young, unarmed people in the sea.

Now we face a different situation — perhaps a more global one. Today’s barbarism is planetary, falling on all of humanity. Missiles rained down on 17 unarmed youths in the Caribbean Sea — perhaps some Colombians. Millions of migrants are persecuted, imprisoned, chained, and expelled. Missiles rain down on the 70,000 people of Gaza, killing them. The climate crisis remains unaddressed, its words erased by Trump. All of this is connected, all part of the same cause.”

This is the complete speech, translated into English, uncut.

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