María Fernanda Espinosa addresses media for the first time as General Assembly President

Informal comments to the media by H.E. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, the President of the 73rd session of the General Assembly, following her oath of office.
Media Stakeout (17 September 2018)
Upon being sworn in as the 73rd President of the General Assembly, María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, the first woman from Latin America to hold the position, vowed to “strengthen multilateralism” and said, “the only way to solve the global problems is through a collective, cooperative approach.”
Espinosa said “the only, I would say, way to solve the global problems is through a collective, cooperative approach. That’s what we need.”
Asked about the role of the General Assembly and how it relates to the parallel work of the UN Security Council, Espinosa said, “there is an existing resolution called ‘Uniting for Peace,’ which allows the General Assembly to take over issues that for one reason or another are not being, you know, addressed and solved by the Security Council. And I stand ready to take these issues on, according to decisions taken also by member states.”
She stressed that “we have a duty to strengthen the multilateral system” as well as a “mandate to represent our peoples in a way according to their needs.”
The main message, she said, “is that this is still the most important venue of the multilateral system.”
Earlier, upon being sworn in, Espinosa received the General Assembly Gavel from outgoing President Miroslav Lajčák and was greeted by Secretary-General António Guterres.
She will be only the fourth woman overall to preside over UN General Assembly
Espinosa had served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility, Minister of Defence, and Coordinating Minister of Cultural and Natural Heritage.
She was the first woman to be named Permanent Representative of Ecuador in New York, after having served as Ambassador in Geneva.
As a writer and poet, Ms. Espinosa has published more than 30 academic articles on the Amazon River, culture, heritage, development, climate change, intellectual property, foreign policy, integration, defence and security. She has also published five volumes of poetry and received the Ecuadorian National Poetry Prize in 1990.