President John Dramani Mahama has called for a renewed commitment to human dignity, rights and solidarity, arguing that the freedom and security of individual nations cannot be separated from the wellbeing of humanity as a whole.
Delivering Ghana’s address at the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday, September 24, 2026, President Mahama said the major crises confronting the world could be overcome if countries embraced a stronger sense of shared humanity.
“What we lack is not resources or intellect. What we lack is the political courage to see one another as a part of a single human family,” he said.
The President urged world leaders to move beyond viewing one another primarily as strategic rivals, economic targets or demographic threats.
He said refugees fleeing violence, migrants seeking opportunities, children affected by conflicts and vulnerable communities all belong to the same human family.
“That refugee fleeing violence belongs. That migrant seeking opportunity belongs. That child in Gaza, Sudan, or Ukraine belongs,” he said.
President Mahama also drew attention to the descendants of enslaved Africans seeking justice, indigenous communities protecting their ancestral lands and small island states facing the consequences of rising sea levels.
He said poor, vulnerable and marginalised people must not be excluded from the international system.
“They belong to our common human family,” he declared.
According to him, recognising that shared humanity imposes a responsibility on governments and international institutions to safeguard dignity, enforce rights and listen to the voices of vulnerable populations.
President Mahama connected the argument to Ghana’s Pan-African history, recalling the words of Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, who declared on the eve of independence in 1957 that Ghana’s independence would be meaningless unless it was linked to the total liberation of Africa.
He said the principle should now be extended beyond Africa.
“Today, from this respected global podium, we must expand that historic truth. The freedom of any nation is insecure unless it is linked to the freedom of all humanity,” President Mahama said.
Story by: Emmanuel Romeo Tetteh(#RomeoWrites✍️)/ Presidential Affairs Correspondent | Ghana 🇬🇭