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M. Sall: Address to World Summit 2022, Session 3
Written by H.E. Macky Sall, President of Senegal; Chairperson, African Union
Friday, February 11, 2022
Address to World Summit
February 11-13, 2022
Note: World leaders were invited to World Summit 2022 but due to air travel restrictions, participated by submitting a video message. The following text is a transcription of the recording.
Honorable Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, Co-founder of the Universal Peace Federation, dear brother Goodluck Jonathan, Chairman of the International Summit Council for Peace, Dr. Thomas Walsh, Chairman of UPF International, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, dear guests. I am delighted to join you again on the occasion of the World Summit of the Universal Peace Federation. I thank you once again, Honorable Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon and all the members of your Federation, for the time and considerable efforts that you continue to devote to the safeguarding of our common humanity. You do this by helping to cultivate the values of tolerance and respect for our differences, to discipline suspicions and appease resentments, to foster mutual trust and to establish peaceful co-existence between peoples, cultures and civilizations.
This is why the theme of your summit, “Towards Peace on the Korean Peninsula,” sounds like a wish and an optimistic bet on the future. This future is conditioned by our choices, from the most obscure to the most enlightened: There is the obscure choice of war which consecrates the triumph of violence over peace, of death over life. There is the enlightened choice of peace, which germinates in wisdom, and guides action towards progress and human fraternity.
As laureate of the Sun Hak Peace Prize, I join you in the enlightened choice of peace. According to the ethical and moral values we share, the cost of war is always higher than the price of peace. But peace is not always given. It does not offer itself as an obvious way. It is cultivated in the Garden of Courage, Trust and Dialogue. This is where it flourishes to bear the fruits of mutual understanding.
If the dark hours of the war may have divided the Korean people, I want to make the optimistic bet that by their courage and legendary genius, they can overcome the mistrust inherited from old fears and return to the Garden of Trust and Dialogue to realize their desire for peace. This is my fervent wish with you for the Korean Peninsula.
I wish you every success to your Summit and thank you for your kind attention.
To go to the World Summit 2022 Schedule page, click here.