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Nelson Mandela statue unveiled at UN

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years under South Africa’s white minority government.

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UN leaders have honoured Nelson Mandela as a statue of the late South African leader was unveiled at its headquarters.

“Nelson Mandela embodied the highest values of the United Nations – peace, forgiveness, compassion and human dignity,” UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said.

This year marks the centenary of Mr Mandela’s birth, and the UN is declaring 2019-2028 as the Nelson Mandela Decade of Peace.

A peace summit was scheduled in honour of the prisoner-turned-president as the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting of world leaders began.

UN General Assembly president Maria Fernanda Espinosa addresses the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit
UN General Assembly president Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces addresses the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit (Richard Drew/AP)

Four years after he walked out of jail in 1990, he became the country’s first black president in its first multi-racial elections.

Over the ensuing decades, he became a Nobel peace laureate and global statesman.

“Few people in the history of our world have left such an incredible mark on humanity,” UN General Assembly president Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces said.

Dignitaries and members of Mr Mandela’s family, including his widow Graca Michel, gathered as a cloth was pulled off a life-size sculpture of a smiling Mr Mandela, his hands outstretched.

Someone in the group tucked a small South African flag in the statue’s lapel.

Ms Espinosa Garces said she hoped the figure’s presence at the UN would serve as “a reminder that our differences are to be celebrated” and that the world body’s work “should always be guided by the inspiration and the promise that Mandela has left us”.

In a speech at the UN in 1994, he said its challenge was “to answer the question – given the interdependence of the nations of the world – what is it that we can and must do to ensure that democracy, peace and prosperity prevail everywhere!”

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said Mr Mandela believed the UN “was the most valuable instrument to advance peace in the world and to develop equality and to advance the prospects of humanity generally”.

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