man declares freedom
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00:01Honorable delegates, heads of state, leaders of nations, distinguished representatives
00:05of peoples great and small, I greet you not as a career diplomat, nor as a man bred for
00:11banquet halls and handshakes.
00:13I do not come to you speaking the rehearsed language of polished politics.
00:17I come to you as a soldier of my people, as a guardian of a wounded land, as a son of
00:21a continent that has carried the cross of the world, yet has never worn its crown.
00:26My name is Captain Ibrahim Traor, President of Burkina Faso, and today I speak not only
00:30for the 22 million souls in my nation, but for a continent whose stories have been twisted,
00:35whose pain has been ignored, and whose dignity has been repeatedly auctioned off at the altar
00:40of foreign interests.
00:42Africa is not a vigor.
00:43Africa is not a battlefield.
00:45Africa is not your experiment, your puppet, your warehouse of raw materials.
00:50Africa is rising not to kneel but to stand, and today I say before this great assembly
00:54of nations, Africa will not kneel.
00:57One on the false generosity of global politics.
01:01For decades you have sent us aid with one hand while extracting our lifeblood with the
01:04other.
01:05You build wells in our villages while your corporations drain our rivers.
01:09You donate vaccines, yet patent the cures.
01:10You speak of climate action, yet continue to fund the very forces that burn our forests
01:14and dry our lakes.
01:16What kind of generosity is this?
01:18The kind that feeds the mouth but silences the voice.
01:21The kind that keeps a man alive just enough to keep him dependent.
01:24We are not blind to this hypocrisy.
01:27Let me be clear, we are not ungrateful for sincere humanitarian assistance, but we reject
01:31a global order that disguises exploitation as partnership.
01:36We reject financial institutions that lend with one hand and steal sovereignty with the
01:40other.
01:41Africa no longer wants charity.
01:43We want justice.
01:45We want control over our own destinies.
01:47Two on the chains of colonialism and its modern descendants.
01:50Our wounds did not begin with us.
01:54They were inherited legacies of an empire-building madness that saw us not as humans, but chief
02:00as cargo labor tools.
02:02My ancestors were not consulted when maps were drawn with rulers and compasses in Berlin.
02:07The borders of Burkina Faso, like those of many African nations, were not carved by our
02:12ancestors, but by men who had never stepped foot on our soil.
02:16We knew nothing about languages, our tribes, or our spirits.
02:20Today, colonialism has a new face.
02:22It wears suits.
02:23It hosts forums.
02:24It signs contracts in Geneva and Paris and Washington.
02:27But it still takes without consent.
02:28It still dictates instead of dialogues.
02:30It still silences instead of listening.
02:32If you want to talk about peace, then let's begin by unlearning the arrogance that peace
02:37is something only you can teach us.
02:39Three on resource exploitation and the myth of development.
02:43McCall is developing as if the theft of centuries did not set us back.
02:46As if the gold from our lands, the diamonds from our rivers, the oil beneath our feet did
02:50not build the very skyscrapers in Dunn, which this assembly sets.
02:54Let us speak plainly.
02:56Burkina Faso is rich.
02:58Africa is rich.
02:59Rich in minerals and culture and wisdom and youth.
03:02But you have taught us to measure richness in GDP and export value.
03:06You call it development when a foreign company owns 90% of a gold mine on our land.
03:12You call it progress when your security forces guard cobalt mines but not our children's schools.
03:17That is not progress.
03:18That is piracy with legal documents.
03:21From now on, we will define development on our own terms.
03:24Development that puts children in classrooms, not minerals on cargo ships.
03:29Development that respects the land, the people, and the soul of a nation.
03:32We are on sovereignty and interference.
03:34Why is it that when an African nation makes independent choices, we are called unstable?
03:39Why is it that when we seek military cooperation outside the colonial sphere, we are labeled
03:44a threat?
03:45Burkina Faso is chosen to walk a path of sovereignty that is not a threat to peace.
03:49It is a declaration of adulthood.
03:51We are no longer under your guardianship.
03:53We are no longer your junior partners in diplomacy.
03:56We are a free people.
03:58If a nation chooses partners that respect it rather than exploit it, that is not rebellion.
04:02That is wisdom.
04:04Let it be known.
04:06No foreign power will dictate the alliance of the Burkina Faso.
04:09We will build relations based on mutual respect, not historical guilt or present-day intimidation.
04:15Five-one terrorism and manufacture wars.
04:17You ask why there is violence in the Sahel.
04:20You ask why our youth take up arms.
04:22But you do not ask who benefits when our minds are guarded by private mercenaries, while our
04:27villages are left vulnerable.
04:29You do not ask how weapons arrive in deserts that produce no steel.
04:33You do not ask why peacekeeping never seems to end the war.
04:36The truth is, many of the so-called solutions to African security problems are merely business
04:42models.
04:43Endless conflict has become a market, and African suffering has become a subscription-based service.
04:49Burkina Faso has decided to break that cycle.
04:52We will fight terror, but not with dependency.
04:55We will secure our nation not with foreign dictates, but with national dignity, six on migration
05:00and human dignity.
05:01We do not want our youths drowning in the Mediterranean.
05:05We do not want our brightest minds fleeing the countries that once called us savages.
05:09We do not want remittances.
05:10We want reasons for our people to stay.
05:13Why do our youths flee?
05:14Not because we lack beauty, but because we are made to lack opportunity.
05:18Not because we hate our land, but because our land is treated as someone else's property.
05:22Migration is not a crisis, it is a symptom of wars we did not start, of loans we did not
05:28need, of a world order that tells our youth their only value lies outside of the world.
05:31The solution is not border fences.
05:35The solution is justice, for seven on Africa's place in the world.
05:40Africa is not a mistake to be fixed.
05:42Africa is not a failed continent.
05:45Africa is the womb of the world, the cradle of civilization, the keeper of tomorrow's hope.
05:50We have been made invisible in global decisions that affect us deeply.
05:54At the UN Security Council, Africa with 54 sovereign nations has no permanent seat.
05:59But justice is this.
06:00You call it balance.
06:02We call it betrayal of.
06:03You speak of democracy, yet uphold a global structure where the powerful few veto the dreams
06:08of the many.
06:09We will no longer whisper in rooms where we deserve to speak with full voice.
06:13Aid on faith and spiritual dignity.
06:15We are a spiritual people.
06:17Before your cathedrals, our ancestors sang to the sky.
06:21Before your missionaries, we knew the language of the rivers and the laws of the sacred forest.
06:25Christianity came, Islam came, and we received them not as slaves but as seekers.
06:29But now we ask will the church and the mosque stand with us, truly with us, when all people
06:34are displaced by greed, mosque, as globalization.
06:37Will your pulpits echo our cries or only repeat the songs of the powerful?
06:41Faith, too, must be decolonized and must walk with the poor, not the privileged.
06:45Nine on unity among African nations.
06:48This is not a speech from one country.
06:50This is the stirring of a continent.
06:52You see Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso forming a new bond.
06:56When you fear our unity, it is wise because it threatens the myth that Africa can only
07:00rise under your supervision.
07:02We are uniting not to wage war, but to wage dignity.
07:05To pool our courage to share strength.
07:08To protect each other when the world turns its back.
07:11Pan-Africanism is not a dream.
07:13It is our lifeline, and we will build it stone by stone, heart by heart, with or without
07:17your approval.
07:18Ten to the youth of Africa.
07:20To the young boy selling oranges by the roadside.
07:23To the girl who walks ten kilometers to attend school.
07:27To the child whose only choice is a stone but who dreams of stars.
07:30You are the reason we fight.
07:32Do not believe the lie that your continent is cursed.
07:35You are the blessing.
07:36Do not envy foreign passwords.
07:38Be proud of your name, your land, your roots.
07:40The world may not applaud you now, but the future will speak your name in honor.
07:44Eleven final words we will not kneel.
07:47I do not come to declare war, I come to declare will.
07:50So we will not kneel to fear.
07:52We will not kneel to foreign banks.
07:54We will not kneel to outdated empires masquerading as friends.
07:58Africa is not asking for a seat at your table.
08:01We are building our own a table where no child eats last.
08:05Where no nation is silence because it lacks nuclear arms.
08:08Where justice is not filtered through the lens of race or history.
08:12What shared is breath is shared.
08:14This is our vision and this is our vow.
08:16Let the world hear it today and always.
08:18Africa will not kneel.