An awareness of our past is essential to our personality and identity as Africans

Former Ethiopian leader, Emperor Haile Selassie 

 

“We must look, first, to Almighty God, who has raised man above the animals and endowed him with intelligence and reason. We must put our faith in Him, that He will not desert us or permit us to destroy humanity which He created in His image.”- Emperor Haile Selassie.

 

“Haile Selassie’s address to the United Nations on October 6, 1963, including the ‘War Speech’ which became one of Bob Marley’s hits.”

An Awareness Of Our Past Is Essential To The Establishment Of Our Personality And Identity As Africans – Emperor Haile Selassie

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loFDn94oZJ0

 

Twenty-seven years ago, as Emperor of Ethiopia, I mounted the rostrum in Geneva, Switzerland, to address the League of Nations and to appeal for relief from the destruction which had been unleashed against my defenseless nation by the Fascist invader. I spoke then both to and for the conscience of the world. My words went unheeded, but history testifies to the accuracy of the warning that I gave in 1936.

 

Today, I stand before the world organization that has succeeded to the mantle discarded by its discredited predecessor. In this body is enshrined the principle of collective security, which I unsuccessfully invoked at Geneva. Here, in this Assembly, responds the best – perhaps the last – hope for the peaceful survival of mankind.

 

In 1936, I declared that it was not the Covenant of the League that was at stake, but international morality. Undertakings, I said then, are of little worth if the will to keep them is lacking. The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.

 

But these, too, as were the phrases of the Covenant, are only words; their value depends wholly on our will to observe and honor them and give them content and meaning. The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man’s basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: the courage to speak and act – and if necessary, to suffer and die – for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied.

 

These lessons must be learned anew by each succeeding generation, and that generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience. This Organization and each of its members bear a crushing and awesome responsibility: to absorb the wisdom of history and to apply it to the problems of the present, in order that future generations may be born, and live, and die, in peace.

 

The record of the United Nations during the few short years of its life affords mankind a solid basis for encouragement and hope for the future. The United Nations has dared to act when the League dared not in Palestine, in Korea, in Suez, in the Congo. There is no one among us today who does not conjecture upon the reaction of this body when motives and actions are called into question.

 

The opinion of this Organization today acts as a powerful influence on the decisions of its members. The spotlight of world opinion, focused by the United Nations upon the transgressions of the renegades of human society, has thus far proved an effective safeguard against unchecked aggression and unrestricted violation of human rights.

 

The United Nations continues to serve as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion. It still provides the essential escape valve without which a slow build-up of pressure would have long since resulted in a catastrophic explosion.

Its actions and decisions have sped the achievement of freedom by many people on the continents of Africa and Asia. Its efforts have contributed to the advancement of the standard of living of people in all corners of the world.

 

For this, all men must give thanks. As I stand here today, how faint, how remote are the memories of 1936. How different in 1963 are the attitudes of men? We then existed in an atmosphere of suffocating pessimism. Today, cautious yet buoyant optimism is the prevailing spirit.

 

Continue reading: https://juskosave.blogspot.com/2020/12/an-awareness-of-our-past-is-essential.html