NAYIB ARMANDO BUKELE, President of El Salvador, said crises are often warnings for the world to reflect on and think about the future it wants to create.  Recalling a number of such moments throughout the twentieth century — from the First and Second World Wars to the Great Depression — he said the United Nations was founded with an optimistic view of the future.  He said he had taken a “selfie” to demonstrate that the world had indeed changed and to show how El Salvador had changed.  The recent global crisis is a new warning, he said, adding that El Salvador is thinking about the future it wants.  However, the world will forge ahead into a greater crisis, as current solutions are primarily short-term and not sustainable.  

The world, he continued, is increasingly accelerated, more disunited, more anxious, more pessimistic and more individualistic, and where almost no one knows where the international community is going, or at least where it wants to go, solving problems momentarily, jumping from crisis to crisis.  “Society and the world are suffering, and it seems that each time we are further from solving the causes of this suffering,” he said.  As an example, he said that today, the world is producing more than it needs and yet people still die of hunger.  The ongoing global pandemic has deepened the situation and put civilization on the verge of collapse.

Civilization is fragile, and the world is currently failing to make progress, he continued.  At this point in time, let the world learn from history and continue with progress, building on the shoulders of the past.  The path towards the future must respect the past and forge ahead on previous achievements.  This hinges on a world that must continue to make progress.  “We still have time to learn from this crisis,” he said.  All the tools are available, from having an interconnected planet to being able to use a broad variety of technological innovations.  Right now, the world must decide on its future.  Instead of asking for multilateralism to be remodelled, he said, El Salvador is already going down this path.  His country is designing the future it wishes to see, where people pursue their interests and the economic benefits follow.  Using existing tools, El Salvador has adopted a range of efforts aimed at reaching those in need, with a view to building the future it wants.