Uphold global community’s interest, Cayetano tells UN members

While states are not required to act as a community, Cayetano said the fact that there are problems that can only be solved by a “united global community.” (File Photo: Alan Peter Cayetano/Facebook)

MANILA — Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano on Sunday called on United Nations member-states to uphold the global community’s interest as he underscored that today’s social contract is no longer confined to one’s nation state.

“We should therefore exert efforts to connect, to emphasize commonalities and not differences, to think that we are less Filipinos, Americans, Chinese, French, Russians, and to think more of ourselves as global citizens, the people of the United Nations,” he told world leaders and foreign ministers at the 73rd UN General Assembly in New York.

While states are not required to act as a community, Cayetano said the fact that there are problems that can only be solved by a “united global community.”

In migration alone, Cayetano said the UN-convened Global Compact on Migration is already a huge step in the right direction, with which will be greater if all UN member-states are on board.

“The United Nations is the place, the venue of great opportunity, of putting action to our Faith, of changing the world for the better,” he said. “This is of course if we can transcend our personal and sometimes national interest, for the interest of the global community, or simply put, for the greater good.”

Cayetano’s view on upholding the global community’s interest puts him on the same side as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres who pointed out that the future rests on “solidarity.”

The DFA chief’s statement also comes as President Donald Trump informed the UN body that he and his administration “reject the ideology of globalism” in general and relation to international justice and migration issues.

In his 73rd UN General Assembly speech, Trump underscored that global governance is another form of “coercion and domination” that “responsible nations must defend against.”