Queen Rania of Jordan recently spoke at the Paris Peace Forum and stressed that the world must change how it responds to crises.
“Our world is off-balance; simply trying to keep things steady is not enough,” Her Majesty told the audience. She said there must be four realignments to the challenges of humanity and how it tackles challenges.
“Renewing our faith in truth, recognizing that we all have equal worth, safeguarding the future, and believing in our ability to remake the world as we wish it could be.”
Queen Rania was in Paris to speak at the fifth edition of the Paris Peace Forum and spoke of how the world is facing so many challenges but said the world is failing at addressing them.
She said: “Yet, too often, we are failing to meet our common threats with a spirit of common cause.”
Addressing the many challenges, Queen Rania stressed that the global community must “treat this moment like the shake-up it is.”
Her Majesty said people must speak the truth and follow that up with real actions. She then focused on climate change and how the world has been responding to it. She remarked: “It’s too late for wish lists. We need binding to-do lists to save both our credibility and our planet.”
Queen Rania then addressed the need to honour our common humanity and cited the ongoing refugee crisis. She said there was a difference in how the world accepted Ukrainian refugees versus Arab refugees: “What accounts for the contrast in compassion? Does skin colour make all the difference? Too often, the barrier isn’t budgets. It’s bigotry and bias.”
Regarding the third realignment, the Queen of Jordan stressed the importance of understanding that our actions today will impact future generations. She said the next election or next financial quarter are not the most important; instead, doing “right by the next generation of humanity” matters most.
Lastly, Her Majesty said the world must renew its hope and confidence. Even though the world has faced crisis after crisis, the world has made huge strides, with infant mortality falling by half and more children being educated.
Queen Rania said we must have hope and believe that things will improve. She concluded by encouraging those in the audience not to be complacent and to try to anticipate crises earlier “so that we can fix problems before they become perils and prevent tomorrow’s crises before they start.”
