Africa Renewal: The United Nations turns 80 in 2025, and you are also celebrating your 80th birthday, what key milestones have you been able to witness in the UN’s journey? 

Gertrude Mongella: Thank you very much! I’m glad you reminded me that I am a ‘Twin sister’ to the United Nations, which is a very big privilege. 

The United Nations was formed out of a desire to bring peace in this world after the second world war. So, nations which existed then, decided to have a union.

This means that most of the African countries, Asian countries, were not yet nations, they were under the colonial power. So that first of all, gave me an indication that the United Nations literally was for the already independent countries in the world, which were few. 

But as we got independent in Africa, we joined the United Nations. We thought that the ideas and the dreams of the United Nations, were very useful to all of us. I’ll give you an example, the Commission on Status of Women (CSW) was formed in 1946, just after the union was formed. I think this was an important, forward-looking strategy, that the United Nations – because of the war, they recognized that the women had played a big role in sustaining society and families, and they wanted to make sure that at least they recognized that type of activity that the women had carried on during the war. 

In African countries we see the same thing, that in the struggle for independence, many women have played a very critical role to the liberation of the continent. 

Beijing was, I can say, that was where I really became an international civil servant. 

Now if you look at that time, that’s when you see the role of the United Nations. It was able to bring together the whole world. 181 nations came together, NGOs in their numbers came together in Beijing. It gave me an opportunity to appreciate the work of the United Nations, it was only and organization like the UN which could bring together the world and discuss an agenda which could be decided unanimously at Beijing. 

So, in 80 years, I should clap for my twin sister or brother, the UN. So far, so good, like myself, so far, so good.  As the UN keeps on moving, I’m also keeping on moving to make this world a better world. 

As we mark Beijing +30, what are your reflections on progress so far?

We have, first of all, made women a permanent agenda. Whether you like it or not, it is a permanent agenda. In all activities of the planet, people cannot avoid women. We have made also the agenda to be a human agenda, not a gender agenda. At the beginning there was a mistake, [we thought] it’s women who are supposed to talk about women, but with Beijing it became very clear, that the agenda is for both men and women, if we don’t work together, if we don’t cooperate, we’ll never make it. 

What was the sense of the group 30 years ago and is there still that same sense of optimism today? 

Thirty years is a long time. 

I recently met a young girl who told me, “Mama Mongella, I'm happy to meet you because my mother says that when you went to Beijing with her, she was expecting me.” 30 years and she’s already a graduate, so you can see it’s a long time. 

Now, what we need to do is, for us who went to Beijing, we are of age to hand over to the young people to carry on. 

Let’s hand over what we decided in Beijing and what we have experienced in 30 years. 

This is my message to the young people: We never lose by implementing the [Beijing] Platform for Action, it is still valid, and it needs to be worked on. 

We could not solve all the problems in 30 years, because the problems we had, had been there for centuries – and therefore we still need a lot of work to do.

What we did in Beijing was to launch a revolution -- a social, political, economic revolution. 

At my concluding remarks I said: “A revolution has begun. There’s no going back.” 

UN Member States recently adopted the ‘Pact for the Future’, what advice would you give world leaders today to help the world accelerate the achievement of the SDGs and the recommendations spelt out in the Pact?

One of them is the concept that we have to really make sure everybody understands-that concept of human equality-that men and women are equal – not in a sense that just says that we are equal for the sake of being equal, but we are equal in opportunities, and we also can contribute equally to the development of our nations. 

We should really work on it-men and women together. 

The other thing is the control diseases, because we have seen with COVID-19 that if we are not careful, we can all perish in a few years, so the control of disease is very crucial. 

Another thing is poverty-eradication of poverty. I wish people could taste what it means to be poor. That you are not assured of your meal, that you are not assured of your shelter. Poverty goes beyond just not having money. Poverty [can also be] mental poverty. 

That’s where education comes in. 

With mental poverty, you cannot think, you cannot decide, so [when] we are talking about democracy and so on, sometimes it’s mental poverty-it’s no other than mental poverty. So, we have the financial poverty, economic poverty, but we also have the mental poverty. And I think we have to eradicate all of this, if we want to be equal. 

And that equality I’m talking about goes even [to] the equality between nations, between areas, communities-because we can be in a rich country with very many poor people. So, poverty goes beyond one individual, sometimes it’s between nations.

Finally, the most important, peace. Peace is a very sensitive issue, and sometimes we take it for granted. As long as we don't have wars, we think we are at peace, but peace starts the inside of somebody being peaceful. When we look at some of the actions taking place in our societies today, they are a result of lack of peace within an individual. For example, violence against women, children or even men. That type of violence comes out of the lack of peace in an individual in society and at international level. 

Globally, there is a rise of gender-based violence. What do you believe to be the underlying issues leading to this situation? Is it, as you had mentioned, poverty or lack of education?

It's both. Education doesn’t mean getting papers from universities or institutions of learning. I think, education means getting knowledge. Some people don't have the right knowledge about society and about human beings, and this is also accelerated by the poverty.

But not only poverty, poverty which I said is a mental poverty-because some people are very rich but also very violent. So, the mental poverty is also another problem. Most of the time we don't talk about mental poverty, we only talk about financial or resource poverty-but even that one has an effect on violence. 

If you look at our situations in Africa-You have to also examine, people having the excuse of cultures- most of the things done against women, do not really depend on cultures, they depend on the mental poverty and also on the lack of knowledge about the human being. 

What are your main concerns as we look at the state of the world today?

I am very much frightened about the survival of the climate. I don’t know what’s going to happen if we keep on experiencing climate change. We are not sure when the rains come, how they come. We are not sure. We are not sure of the temperatures of the rising or falling of the oceans. We are not sure of what is going to happen with the disappearance of some of the species on the planet. I am suspecting we the human beings, might also perish with this situation which is continuing and comes out of the climate change. 

What role can women play in mitigating climate change?

African women are the greatest botanists. I think the nations owe them a lot. It’s this African woman, who knows every plant in her environment. She’s a botanist. Otherwise, she wouldn’t survive. We didn’t have hospitals, but it’s through these African women-mother or grandmother-who knows this plant cures these diseases, this plant is good to eat, this plant can be used for this purpose-that knowledge we have not put together, as a result we think we are very poor-but I think, botanically we are the best-the women.  This is where I would like to see more efforts, of using the women’s botanical knowledge and even scientific knowledge to develop our own nations. We have ignored, we have marginalized, we think we can only depend on imported ideas-but we in Africa, have enough knowledge which we must make use of and therefore build our own nations. We have really wasted a lot of time without appreciating our own knowledge. 

What gives you hope for the future? 

The hope for the future is when I look at particularly, Africa.  We have more that 50% of the population is young people. That’s a big hope. What we should ask ourselves is: How are you going to utilize this opportunity of young people with energy, young people we can train for a better world, young people who can give us hope? If we work hard and use the opportunities we have, particularly with the young people, both boys and girls-I’m sure the world will become better.