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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
Mexico's welfare plan stuns the UN
DAVID RABY explains Mexico's radical intitiative to provide assistance to the 750 million poorest citizens on the planet
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador chairs the UN Security Council meeting on Exclusion, Inequality and Conflict on November 9 2021 [Eskinder Debebe/UN]

MEXICO has just assumed the rotating presidency of the UN security council, and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Amlo) took the unprecedented step of arranging to chair a session of the council himself. 

Heads of state normally address the general assembly, but Amlo clearly saw this as an opportunity to take the stage at the key decision-making body of the organisation. 

On November 9 he chaired a session on a theme chosen by Mexico: peace, security, exclusion, inequality and conflict. After brief statements by the secretary-general and an Ecuadorian woman representing indigenous peoples, Amlo quoted former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (one of the founders of the UN) on the universal right to a life free from fear and poverty. 

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