Prime Minister Edi Rama’s address in Parliament on “The ratification of the agreement on the accession of the Republic of Albania, represented by Prime Minister Edi Rama, to the Charter of the Board of Peace.”
Today, this Parliament convenes to ratify an act of goodwill which Albania, first and foremost this governing majority in the name of this country and, of course, the entire Parliament to the extent possible, has a duty to undertake whenever the cause of peace comes to the table, every opportunity to contribute to peace.
We, the parliamentary majority of Albania, for three full consecutive mandates, have made ourselves the voice and the worker of peace in this troubled region, even when this has appeared, and has even been described, as betrayal. A label which, in truth, has served as decisive proof of the love of peace for many who have worked for peace throughout the history of this world.
We have taken Albania’s commitment to peace as far as the chairmanship of the OSCE, and to the table of the United Nations Security Council, where we have honored the flag and the Albanian nation.
A decade ago, this country was an island that appeared on the world’s radar only for bad news, and Albanians around the world were seen as the representatives of that island, covered in all manner of darkness by the world’s media, some of it true, and some of its vicious fabrication.
Today, that island, where even the deputies of this Parliament, and the Prime Minister himself, were counted as tourists every time they returned from abroad, is another Albania: a destination of 12 million tourists, with an airport recording the highest growth in passenger numbers in Europe, and for the nth year running, the first in the region, leaving Belgrade, the historic main airport of the Western Balkans, in second place.
This other Albania has removed from Albanians the burden of a name which, after many years of humiliation on the streets of Europe, is now pronounced with heads held high in every European language. And precisely today, when the world is profoundly unsettled and peace is under unprecedented pressure from every side, Albania, internationally valued for several years now, is invited personally by the President of the United States to become a founding member of a new international body created by him, under the meaningful name “the Board of Peace.”
This is a special honor, and another opportunity to contribute to peace, not because we are great, or because conflicts in other parts of the world cannot be resolved without us, but because it gives us the opportunity to continue to grow as a state, by expanding our knowledge and strengthening our awareness as both the voice and the worker of peace, and to be recognized globally, as a country and as a people, for what we seek to be in this world where, if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.
International structured groups have an organizational chart that you do not understand, but that is not a problem. What matters is that you will raise your voting card, you will approve the Board of Peace, and you will approve me as the representative of the Board of Peace at the White House.
In closing, I wish to inform you that next Monday we will have another extraordinary honor: I will address the Knesset, the Parliament of Israel, as Prime Minister of Albania, in the same format that was reserved some time ago for the President of the United States, and for a very limited number of foreign leaders in the history of that Parliament. Their names can easily be found, but they give an entirely special dimension to the privilege accorded to me and to this governing majority, supported by many Albanians, and to Albania itself, to speak in that Assembly.
I wish to underline that for Albania, for me, and for all of us, every invitation that is not extended to all the states of the world is considered an honor, because we are neither the center of the world, nor a country with outstanding economic or military power, but we are a very small country that erased itself from the map of Europe for fifty years, locking the door from the inside. Then, when it opened the door to connect with the world, it was mistreated from within and from outside for years, dragged along, at times under the rubble of the pyramid schemes and at times through pits of debt; at times in the hands of those who governed it badly, and at times in the international mirrors of those who threw onto the backs of Albania and Albanians many undeserved stones, a country that no one, except me and a handful of people who believed, when the entire Socialist Party was saying, “this man is crazy, do not follow him,” could even have imagined would climb to where it has climbed today through the work, determination, and extraordinary commitment of a decade that has overturned Albania’s backward history.
