Bea Cupin
MANILA, Philippines – In a hall full of top officials and diplomats from all around the world, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Rappler co-founder Maria Ressa called on the United Nations to win the battle for information integrity.
“Information integrity is the mother of all battles. Win this, and we can win the rest. Lose this, and we lose everything,” said Ressa.
“Please choose courage over comfort, facts over fiction, hope over fear. A lot has changed since the UN was created 80 years ago, but its values – peace, human rights, justice, rule of law – are more essential today than ever. It’s time to create again: to build better,” she added.
The United Nations celebrates the 80th year of its existence at a tumultuous time.
“The biggest battle we face today is impunity – and it leads to our dehumanization: in both the physical world, where wars rage from Ukraine to Gaza; and in the virtual world, where our minds and emotions are manipulated by surveillance capitalism for profit. To fight that, we need information integrity,” said Ressa.
Ressa is one of five speakers — alongside Secretary-General António Guterres, President of General Assembly Annalena Baerbock, former Liberia president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and former World Health Organization (WHO) director-general of the Gro H. Brundtland — to have addressed the commemoration of the multilateral body’s anniversary.
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