UNITED STATES: On Monday, Prince Harry delivered a fervent speech on the United Nations stage in which he encouraged world leaders to “be brave” in the face of climate change, a global pandemic and fake news and disinformation, while also citing the ‘rolling back of Constitutional Rights’ in his home back in the US.
Prince Harry has deliberately stepped into the political lair, an unusual move for royalty given the British royal family’s long-standing reputation of political neutrality.
The British Prince gave the keynote speech to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela Day at the UN and acknowledged that it has been a “painful year in a painful decade”, highlighting the adverse effects of a global pandemic, rising temperatures due to climate change and a stifling of women’s reproductive rights in the US.
Harry, who currently lives in the US, also discussed how the effects of the pandemic were felt acutely in the more “vulnerable” third world countries, especially in Africa, which has been left “Mired in a food and fuel crisis, the likes of which we have not seen in decades,” he said in his speech.
Harry also added on the issue of women’s rights, “We are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom, the crores of Mandela’s life.” The speech comes nearly a month after Supreme Court overturned the historic Roe v. Wade decision, criminalizing abortion in several states, like Ohio, Texas, Utah, Kentucky, Louisiana and West Virginia.
In his speech, Harry also quoted a certain extract from Mandela’s letter which he wrote from a prison cell in South Africa in 1970 that said, “To a freedom fighter, hope is what a lifebelt is to a swimmer: a guarantee that one will keep afloat and free from danger.”
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