United Nations Officials

"The executive director of the World Food Program is calling for the world’s billionaires to step up and help his organization fight hunger... David Beasley... said he was supportive of capitalism but added that capitalism without a heart is a disaster... Beasley said that the world’s billionaires needed to step up. He specifically mentioned Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and said that he needed just 10% of the $64 billion Bezos’s wealth grew by last year to fund the food program... Beasley also lambasted the media at several points during his speech for focusing on distractions like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and not focusing on the food needs of the world. He called for the media to be more balanced between those distractions and the food needs of the world."

"Jeff Bezos is getting rich not because of the profits of Amazon, but because of the increase of the share price. You’ve heard that he made what, $60 billion since the beginning of the pandemic? That’s not because of the profits of Amazon... The actual profits are nothing like that. It’s maybe one billion altogether, but he made 60! From the share price."

"We’ve now reached stratospheric inequality. Billionaires burning into space, away from a world of pandemic, climate change and starvation. 11 people are likely now dying of hunger each minute while Bezos prepares for an 11-minute personal space flight. This is human folly, not human achievement. The ultra-rich are being propped up by unfair tax systems and pitiful labor protections. US billionaires got around $1.8 trillion richer since the beginning of the pandemic and nine new billionaires were created by Big Pharma’s monopoly on the COVID-19 vaccines. Bezos pays next to no US income tax but can spend $7.5 billion on his own aerospace adventure. Bezos' fortune has almost doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic. He could afford to pay for everyone on Earth to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and still be richer than he was when the pandemic began."

"In October, David Beasley, head of the U.N. food agency, tweeted a cheeky congratulations to Musk for reportedly earning $36 billion in a single day. "1/6 of your one-day increase would save 42 million lives that are knocking on famine's door," he wrote... Musk tweeted: "If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it." ...Beasley quickly clarified that his earlier tweet referred to feeding "people on the brink of starvation" and not solving world hunger, he invited Musk to meet "anywhere—Earth or space" to discuss the potential donation. So far, Musk has made no commitments to the agency. Still... How much of a dent would $6 billion make when it comes to feeding millions? ...WFP raised $8.4 billion last year, yet the global food crisis has only worsened. In fact, since Musk and Beasley first started their Twitter conversation, the total number of people at risk of famine has risen to 45 million... In response to Musk's request for details, Beasley tweeted him the math: "$.43 x 42,000,000 x 365 days = $6.6 billion." That's how much it would cost to provide one meal a day for one year to this population in need...The food aid, says WFP, consists of commodities such as rice, maize and high-energy biscuits. Elon Musk asked Twitter followers if he should sell Tesla shares. They said yes."

"I was out in the middle of Niger. And somebody just comes busting into our meeting, said, 'Nobel Peace Prize! Nobel Peace Prize!' And I'm like, "Well, yeah, wow, who won it?' And they're like, 'We did!' That was the greatest surprise in my life. And wow, wow, wow!"

"There are no famines yet. But I must warn you that if we don’t prepare and act now – to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade – we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months."

"The United States has always been the most generous nation on Earth. And I don't expect the United States to back down now, because it's going to be a lot cheaper to come in and do it right and prevent a lot of migration and a lot of destabilization and, in fact, a lot of deaths from hunger. People are dying now, about every five seconds a child dies from hunger... when it comes to food aid and stabilizing nations and preventing famine, it's remarkable to watch the Republicans and the Democrats come together, lay aside their differences and literally do what they can. And it's been quite a miracle to see. We went from about 1.9 billion when I arrived 3.5 years ago to now about almost four billion dollars from the United States. And so whether you talk about Bush, Obama or Trump and I know Biden will- we will have the support we need from Republicans and Democrats to help the needy people around the world. But this is a one time extraordinary crisis. And we're going to... have to ask the billionaires to step up in a way they've never done before."

"The cost of supporting the Syrian in Syria is about 50 cents per day. That same Syrian ends up in Berlin or Brussels or London, it is 50 to 100 euros per day. And we know that people don't want to leave home. But if they don't have food and they don't have some degree of peace and stability, they will do what any of us would do for our children. So it's a lot cheaper to come in and prevent the destabilization than it is to have war and conflict afterwards."

"When I joined the World Food Program a few years ago, the number of people that were marching toward the brink of starvation was about 80 million people. But over the past three years pre-COVID, it spiked up to 135 million. And you ask the question why? The primary reason was manmade conflict, compounded with climate extremes and fragile- fragile governments. But since COVID has come in and truly exacerbated every extenuating circumstances we had around the world, the numbers are going from 135 million from one year ago to 270 million people marching to the brink of starvation. This is not people going to bed hungry. This is people really struggling to get their next meal... if we don't address this...this is what we're looking at- we're looking at famines, destabilization and mass migration. And it's a lot cheaper to come in and prevent it and do it right. You know, if people in the United States are struggling for food, what [do] you imagine is happening in Niger, Burkina Faso or South Sudan?"

"We are now looking, literally, at 2021 being the worst humanitarian crisis year since the beginning of the United Nations. … We have to prioritize, as I say, the icebergs in front of the Titanic. We’ve really got to give priority to famine, destabilization and migration."

"I think they [the Nobel Committee] were doing two things. They were saying thank you to the women and men who put their lives on the line every day to bring peace, stability, and food security. But the second thing is they were sending a message to the world: the hardest work is yet to come for the World Food Programme because the needs of 2021 are going to be so critical that failure to address those needs will result in war, famine, and mass migration."

"The wealth that we have in this country is extraordinary. Last year, at the height of COVID, a billionaire was created every 17 hours. The average net worth increase by the billionaire community – that’s over 2,000 billionaires worldwide – was $5.2 billion per day... I need an additional $6 billion this year to reach the 41 million ... that are knocking on famine’s door... Let me tell you what will happen if I don’t reach those ... countries with that $6 billion. Yes, you’ll have starvation, mass starvation. You will have destabilization of nations. And you will have mass migration.... The price tag to fix it will not be $6 billion... It will be trillions of dollars."

"The governments are tapped out. This is why and this is when ... the billionaires need to step up now on a one-time basis, $6 billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don't reach them. It's not complicated... I'm not asking them to do this every day, every week, every year... We have a one-time crisis: a perfect storm of conflict, climate change and COVID. ...Just help me with them one time... The world's in trouble and you're telling me you can't give me .36% of your net worth increase to help the world in trouble, in times like this?... What if it was your daughter starving to death? What if it was your family starving to death? Wake up, smell the coffee, and help... My god, people are dying out there... We have a vaccine for this. It's called money, food."

"1/6 of your one-day increase would save 42 million lives that are knocking on famine's door... $.43 x 42,000,000 x 365 days = $6.6 billion. [how much it would cost to provide one meal a day for one year to this population in need]"

"It is as bad as you possibly can imagine. In fact, we’re now looking at the worst humanitarian crisis on Earth. Ninety-five percent of the people don’t have enough food, and now we’re looking at 23 million people marching toward starvation. Out of that, almost 9 million are knocking on famine’s door. The winter months are coming. We’re coming out of a drought. The next six months are going to be catastrophic. It is going to be hell on Earth."

"[Question: What surprised him most about his U.N. post?] I knew there would be strong pushback from governments, but I didn’t anticipate the degree of human suffering, the feeling of inadequacy. I could give speeches, do reports and press conferences, but it was not equal to the need to alleviate the suffering... You see the severest degradation. Bombs hit schools, hospitals, marketplaces, and law seems not to matter at all. All rules of war were cast aside... Today’s human rights violations will become tomorrow’s conflicts."

"Well, it's deeply regrettable of course because the assumption given is that the refugees themselves are migrants, so those seeking political asylum are the problem. And if there are differences between states, between countries, whether it be on trade or strategic issues or greater importance, then states have to really come to grips with the source of the problems. And often it's not the most vulnerable. It's not the migrants. It's not those who are seeking a better life. To me, it seems almost cowardly that governments should seek to sidestep that. I have so much respect for the U.N. in the field, that humanitarian aid workers, the human rights officials. And what frustrates me a great deal is the intergovernmental discussions where the states themselves are often unable to arrive at a conclusion, where the discussions are often rather thoughtless, banal and sometimes too formulaic. And I think the world's people deserve better, and they deserve a political class around the world that is really solving the problems of the planet."

"What if 100m or more people marched around the world in protest at what it is we now see: the ineptitude, selfishness, the cruelties and the threats to our collective well-being? ...This has never been done before; but if we did do it, it might just deliver a sort of shock therapy to those dangerous or useless politicians who now threaten humanity."

"My hope lies in... the leaders of communities and social movements, big and small, who are willing to forfeit everything—including their lives—in defence of human rights. Their valour is unalloyed; it is selfless. There is no discretion or weakness here. They represent the best of us... There are grassroots leaders of movements against discrimination and inequalities in every region… the real store of moral courage and leadership among us..."

"If we do not change course quickly, we will inevitably encounter an incident where that first domino is tipped—triggering a sequence of unstoppable events that will mark the end of our time on this tiny planet..."

"Look at today’s politicians... keen to be viewed as the virile leaders of their respective countries; eager to inflate their image by harming migrants and refugees, the most vulnerable in society. If there is courage in that, I fail to see it. Authoritarian leaders, or elected leaders inclined toward it, are bullies, deceivers, selfish cowards. If they are growing in number it is because (with exceptions) many other politicians are mediocre... Too busy with themselves, or too afraid to stand up to the demagogues and for others, they seem to shelter in the safety of silence and shuffled papers. Only when they leave public office do some speak up, discovering their courage rather belatedly. Many come and go; no one really notices... In consequence, too many summits and conferences held between states are tortured affairs that lack profundity but are full of jargon and tiresome clichés that are, in a word, meaningless."

"Winston Churchill famously claimed that of all human qualities, courage was the most esteemed, because it guaranteed all others. He was right. Courage—moral courage—is the companion of great leadership. No politician could ever be viewed as exceptional unless he or she had it in spades. And historically there would have been no social progress if not for the presence of specific humans dissenting and breaking from herd-inspired suspicion and fear... At best, courage is self-sacrificing, non-violent, modest and based on universal principles — and immensely powerful. Think Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr."

"Even in kindergarten, children should learn – and experience – the fundamental human rights values of respect, equality and justice. From the earliest age, human rights education should be infused throughout the program of every school – in curricula and textbooks, policies, the training of teaching personnel, pedagogical methods and the overall learning environment. Children need to learn what bigotry and chauvinism are, and the evil they can produce. They need to learn that blind obedience can be exploited by authority figures for wicked ends. They should also learn that they are not exceptional because of where they were born, how they look, what passport they carry, or the social class, caste or creed of their parents; they should learn that no-one is intrinsically superior to her or his fellow human beings. Children can learn to recognise their own biases, and correct them. They can learn to redirect their own aggressive impulses and use non-violent means to resolve disputes. They can learn to be inspired by the courage of the pacifiers and by those who assist, not those who destroy. They can be guided by human rights education to make informed choices in life, to approach situations with critical and independent thought, and to empathise with other points of view."

"What worried him most was the absence of any constraints on human rights violations. The massive slaughter, suffering, and displacement of civilians breeds bitterness that has future implications, Zeid warns. “Today’s human rights violations will become tomorrow’s conflicts.”, Moreover, the U.S. withdrawal from its longtime bipartisan role as human rights defender gives autocratic regimes more leeway to repress with impunity, even on issues Washington cares about... The former UN official criticized U.S. human rights violations wherever he saw them. “It’s not like we gave a pass to the Obama administration,” he notes, mentioning Guantanamo, torture, and killing of Afghan civilians. “But we were able to talk to the U.S. administration under Obama. This doesn’t apply to the Trump administration.” ...Zeid was as hard on violations by Arab states as those by Israelis. While he criticized Israeli killing of civilians in Gaza, he earned the ire of his own government with human rights critiques (despite being a former Jordanian ambassador to the United Nations and Washington)."

"...a most unusual man who recently stepped down from four years as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (a separate office from the controversial U.N. Human Rights Council). A Jordanian prince whose father is Arab and mother European, a Muslim who has visited Auschwitz and bicycled around Israel, he is a fervent believer in “the human rights of each individual, everywhere.” A soft-spoken man who talks with hard-edged eloquence, he took on an impossible job, challenging violators on all sides, whether American, Russian, Chinese, African, Arab, Israeli, or other. And doing it publicly.... His arrival on the job “coincided with the horrific beheadings that ISIS put online, and the sheer viciousness in Syria and Iraq was in full flower. There was the [civil war violence in] Central African Republic, Southern Sudan, then Myanmar and Yemen.""

"At a time of change around the globe, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has devoted his life of public service to making the world more just and more humane, At Perry World House, Zeid will help students better understand the relationship between progress in human rights, international institutions and new technologies. At the same time he serves as an example for everyone at Penn of how knowledge and understanding across divides can be used to advance good in our world."

"The University of Pennsylvania has named Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2014-18), the Distinguished Global Leader-in-Residence at Perry World House (PWH) for spring 2019. In addition to his residency at PWH, Penn’s global policy research institute, Al Hussein will also co-teach a class at the Penn Law School... During a tenure that saw human rights abuses in Syria, Myanmar, and elsewhere, he earned a reputation for being courageous and outspoken."

"It seems President Trump is drawn by authoritarian leadership that shows little respect for human rights. This feeds the perspective that the U.S. doesn’t care. When he attacks the U.S. media as ‘enemies of the people,’ two days later [an autocrat like] Cambodia’s Hun Sen uses the same language... It’s not like we gave a pass to the Obama administration, but we were able to talk to the U.S. administration under Obama. This doesn’t apply to the Trump administration."

"People reducing their emissions – by flying less, eating less meat and using clean energy, for example – is important."

"Educating young women and empowering women to come to decision-making tables is the strongest thing that we can do for the climate. When there are more women in boardrooms and in high-level positions in institutions, you get decisions that are wiser and longer term. Of course there are many men that also do this. But there is a tendency for women to be more collaborative, which is the basis of what we need to do, and they tend to think much more long term. [Women] have the first duty of care of our newborn children and hence, biologically, we’re geared towards that stewardship. But it is just plain stupid, frankly, not to use 50% of human potential. We are in such an emergency that we need to deploy 100% of our potential."

"The very concept of being a consumer already points us in the direction of consuming irresponsibly. We have to be able at some point, particularly in developed countries, to get to the point where we say “enough is enough”. Before you make a purchase, or an investment, or any kind of decision that impacts on the planet and on other people, the question should be: “Do I really need this and is this actually conducive to furthering the quality of life on this planet?”"

"Whatever we hold as being possible, and whatever values and principles we live by, determine the actions that we take."

"We have the capital, the technology, the policies. And we have the scientific knowledge to understand that we have to half our emissions by 2030. So we are facing the most consequential fork in the road. If we continue as now, we are going to be irreparably going down a course of constant destruction, with much human pain and biodiversity loss. Or we can choose to go in the other direction, a path of reconstruction and regeneration, and at least diminish the negative impacts of climate change to something that is manageable. But we can only choose it this decade. Our parents did not have this choice, because they didn’t have the capital, technologies and understanding. And for our children, it will be too late. So this is the decade and we are the generation."

"“We struggled for years to be able to bring all of these nature-based issues together. There is no such thing as ‘climate is over here in one bucket, close the lid, open another bucket and here is deforestation, forests and land use, close lid, open another bucket and here are the ocean issues’. They are all part of the same ecosystem upon which we depend.”"

"“If we do not address climate change in a timely manner, it does not really matter what we do on human rights, on education or on health, because destruction on the planet will be so severe, everything else will fall by the wayside.”"

"In the years to come, one lesson drawn from the pandemic response will inevitably be: there is no speed limit but the one we set ourselves. There must not be. Unfortunately, even as political leaders in the Global North learned a new playbook on the fly, they were reluctant to apply it to the project of decarbonization. In the midst of the pandemic response, you could have easily imagined boundless possibilities for climate action too, and there were those who saw the possibilities already in perfect alignment. We don't know what the recovery packages of Covid are going to be,' Christiana Figueres, one of the central architects of the Paris Agreement, told me in the summer of 2020. 'And honestly, the depth of decarbonization is going to largely depend on the characteristics of those recovery packages more than on anything else, because of their scale. We're already at $12 trillion; we could go up to $20 trillion over the next eighteen months. We have never seen - the world has never seen - $20 trillion go into the economy over such a short period of time. That is going to determine the logic, the structures, and certainly the carbon intensity of the global economy at least for a decade, if not more.' If we were going to be spending $20 trillion, in other words, why not spend it on climate?"

"If you're angry, if you're despairing of whatever - what that is is energy. The only thing you have to do is harvest that energy and change the characteristic of it, and then you're contributing to the solution."

"We're not victims of the past; we are creators and creators of the future."

"We are totally on the way of smart design of cities. It is not science fiction. If you look for examples of any of this, it's all already underway."

"we wanted to write a scenario that is actually science-based. But picture this...Picture that you live in a city...That you walk out of your house and, actually, the air is fresh and moist. Why? - because humanity has actually done a mega-planting of trees across the entire world. And we have replenished the forest cover that had been lost. And that forest cover is actually helping us to clean the air and to bring temperatures down. We will have regenerated soils. And we will have regenerated the oceans. Now you have oceans that are plentiful. And you have soils that are fertile and producing - on less land, they're producing much more. Imagine that you walk out of your home. And instead of getting into your singly owned, gas-guzzling vehicle, you actually have a smart vehicle that comes around. It picks you up. And of course, it's an electric, clean vehicle. And it takes you to wherever you want to go. No parking. And all of that area that used to be for parking of all of these stupid vehicles is actually now transformed into gardens. Imagine that all of the buildings will have - on the roof, they will either have solar panels for electricity or they will have food gardens. Imagine that every single surface is actually going to be capturing sunlight to produce the energy for that building or it's going to be contributing to cleaning the air and bringing down the temperature."

"Don't confuse the waves with the current...The current that we have, which is the underlying trajectory of the global economy, independent of the political tides, is definitely toward decarbonization."

"it's never one individual. Far from it. It has to be a critical mass of people who bring their ingenuity, their innovation, their creative thinking and their solution development together. If we're going to do this, it has to be an everyone-in effort. So we went from something that was impossible in 2009 to something that was, OK, maybe possible. Over the years, we moved from possible to likely. And then, eventually, in 2015, to unstoppable. So that arc of possibility is what eventually led to the Paris Agreement."

"I have to change my attitude first. And then, I have to figure out how to be contagious about that."

"Impossible is not a fact. It's an attitude. It's only an attitude. And I decided right then and there that I was going to change my attitude, and I was going to help the world change its attitude on climate change."

"On my first press conference, a journalist asked...Ms. Figueres, do you think that a global agreement is ever going to be possible? And without engaging brain, I heard me utter, not in my lifetime. Well, you can imagine the faces of my press team, who were horrified at this crazy Costa Rican woman who was their new boss. And I was horrified, too. Now, I wasn't horrified at me because I'm kind of used to myself...I was actually horrified at the consequences of what I had just said. Horrified because I thought, OK, well, that expresses the mood. But is that what we really want for our future generations? Are we going to give up now just because this was an incredible attempt and we failed? Is that a reason to give up, and then to condemn future generations to the ravages that will be brought upon them? And I, you know, very quickly I said no, you know, I can't do that."

"We are now at the most critical crossroads in the history of humanity."

"Those corporations that continue to invest in new fossil fuel exploration, new fossil fuel exploitation, are really in flagrant breach of their fiduciary duty because the science is abundantly clear that this is something we can no longer do."

"Every child and adult should have the skills and the tools to respond to the challenges of the world today and make the most of the opportunities that are available."

"People are more connected than ever before, but inequalities and misunderstandings remain deep within and among societies. Human capacity is the ultimate renewable energy, but it faces obstacles everywhere. UNESCO’s role lies in bridging the gaps in global governance by fostering international cooperation in education, the sciences, culture, and communication."

"The award of the Peace Prize to these two ardent defenders of education sends out a resounding message to the world on the importance of education for building peaceful and sustainable societies."