Britain's Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday addressed the United Nations for the first time in more than 50 years, saying she has "witnessed great change, much of it for the better" since her previous speech there in 1957.
Later Tuesday, the queen visited ground zero to lay a floral wreath at the site of the September 11, 2001, terror attack. In a separate event in New York, she cut the ribbon to officially open the Garden of Remembrance for British citizens killed in the attack.
The seven-minute speech to the U.N. General Assembly touched on her first visit decades earlier, when she was a young monarch and the United Nations itself was a young organization.
"When I was first here, there were just three United Nations operations overseas," the queen noted. "Now over 120,000 men and women are deployed in 26 missions across the world."
She spoke of the importance of leadership and how critical the role of the United Nations continues to be in upholding human rights in the 21st century.
"You have helped to reduce conflict, you have offered humanitarian assistance to millions of people," she said, adding that the United Nations has been "deeply committed to tackling the effects of poverty in many parts of the world."
Despite such efforts, she said, "so much remains to be done," citing the struggle against terrorism and the response to climate change.
The queen called for special attention to the "risks facing smaller, more vulnerable nations," many of which belong to the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations that she heads.
