Africa-Press – Ghana. President John Dramani Mahama has used his speech at the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA80) Meeting to tout the outstanding achievements of some Ghanaians in the diaspora.
“Let’s tell all the truth. When we speak of migrants, we speak of Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, a Judge on the US District Court for the Central District of California. She is the first Black female Judge on any of California’s four Federal District Courts. She was born in America to immigrant parents from Ghana,” President Mahama said.
“We speak of Peter Bossman, a medical doctor born in Ghana who moved to the town of Piran in Slovenia in the 1980s. He later became the first Black mayor of Piran, the first Black mayor in Slovenia, and in the whole of Eastern Europe.”
President Mahama mentioned T-Michael, the iconic Ghanaian-Norwegian artist and designer, and the late Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, who was born in Ghana but spent his adulthood in various places in America and Europe.
“These are people who have brought great distinction to the countries that they call home. Just as the migrants and the children of migrants before them did. These are not invaders or criminals,” he said.
President Mahama drew particular attention to the conflict in Sudan, which the world body had described as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
“Twelve million people have had to flee their homes. When we speak of migration, we refer to the 12 million new refugees, whom we, as a global community, should be willing to assist in much the same way that many member nations readily assisted new refugees from Ukraine,” he said.
“Let’s dispense with euphemisms and dog-whistles and speak frankly. It’s not a mystery that when leaders of Western nations complain of their migration problems, they are o en referring to immigrants from the Global South. Many of those migrants are climate refugees.”
President Mahama said interestingly, the Global North emits 75 per cent more greenhouse gases than the Global South.
He said however, the effects of climate change were more severe in the Global South because they lacked the resources to address them effectively.
“So, when the desert encroaches and our villages and towns become unlivable, we are forced to flee,” he said.
He said Warsan Shire, a Somali-British poet born in Kenya to Somalian refugee parents, was London’s first Youth Poet Laureate; stating that she writes in her poem titled “Home”.
“You have to understand that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land; No one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages; No one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled means something more than journey.”
The President said: “We cannot normalise cruelty. We cannot normalise hatred. We cannot normalize xenophobia and racism. If we are going to tell a story, let’s not tell it slant.”
He attributed the migration of Africans to other parts of the world to reasons such as the impact of climate change and conflicts.
For More News And Analysis About Ghana Follow Africa-Press
