Prince Harry mourns ‘painful year in a painful decade’ during Nelson Mandela Day speech at United Nations

Nelson Mandela’s beacon of hope should be a lesson for us all, Prince Harry said Monday during a speech to the United Nations.

The British royal, who was joined in New York by wife Meghan Markle, honored the legacy of the former South African president and anti-apartheid activist on the international day in his honor, but said the world Mandela left behind is in trouble.

Mandela, Harry said, “endured the very worst of humanity: vicious racism and state-sponsored brutality.”

And yet, Mandela was “still able to see the goodness in humanity, still buoyant with a beautiful spirit that lifted everyone around him,” Harry said in a prepared speech.

“Not because he was blind to the ugliness, the injustices of the world — no. He saw them clearly. He had lived them,” the 37-year-old said. “But because he knew we could overcome them.”

Like Mandela, we should find light in the darkness, Harry said. But even he acknowledged just how dark the world is.

“How many of us feel battered, helpless, in the face of seemingly endless stream of disasters and devastation This has been a painful year in a painful decade. We’re living through a pandemic that continues to ravage communities in every corner of the globe,” he said.

“Climate change wreaking havoc on our planet, with the vulnerable suffering most of all. The few weaponizing lies and disinformation at the expense of the money. From the horrific war in Ukraine to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom — the cause of Mandela’s life.”

To his audience specifically, Harry urged their representative countries to take “daring, transformative decisions that our world needs to save humanity,” ignoring politics and powerful interests.

“The right thing to do is not up for debate,” he said.

Beyond the horrifying laundry list of global terrors, Harry did share his own few bright spots, including mother Princess Diana, an activist in her own right, Markle, who he referred to as his “soulmate,” and their two children, Archie and Lilibet.