Dawn.com: CHICAGO: Nobel peace laureates gathered for an annual summit said Monday the work that earned them their prizes is far from over and rallied support for their fight for human rights and global justice.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who as president of the Soviet Union helped end the Cold War and open the communist regime to democracy, said the time has come for “a new global order” that must be “more stable, more just and more humane.”But he warned that tremendous challenges still lie ahead.
Nuclear weapons are once again threatening mass destruction, poverty and deprivation shackle billions of people, while climate change and pollution deprive people of clean water, air and food amid an age-old conflict of man against nature.
“As Nobel laureates, we have the moral right to speak out and we need to take the situation in hand,” said Gorbachev, who launched the annual summit 12 years ago.
“Even though we’re not getting any younger, we must commit our hearts and our souls and we must continue to raise these issues and to speak the truth to power.”Governments are ignoring commitments made to the United Nations and to their citizens, taking a “condescending attitude to the people” and using “old tricks” to benefit vested interests, he said.
“We must unite, we must have solidarity, we must work resolutely to change the world for the better,” Gorbachev told a packed auditorium at the University of Illinois at Chicago. An audience also followed the speech online.
Categories: Americas, Human Rights, Human values, United States