Prior to his speech about Nelson Mandela’s legacy, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle arrived in New York with grins on their faces.
During the two-hour meeting, it is also believed that the Duke of Sussex would give a speech to the participants on poverty and climate change.
As they arrived at the UN General Assembly, Harry and Meghan waved to onlookers while holding hands.
At the United Nations event taking place in New York City today, the 37-year-old will serve as the keynote speaker.
His statements “will center around the memories and legacy of Mandela and what has been learned from his battle and his life that can assist up meet the current challenges in the world today,” South Africa’s UN Mission stated on Friday.
A mission ambassador added that issues like racial prejudice, the gap between the rich and the poor, poverty, and food insecurity are still present in the world today.
The program for Nelson Mandela International Day was formally unveiled on Friday by General Assembly spokesman Paulina Kubiak.
Participants include Assembly President Abdulla Shahid, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and Guinea’s Foreign Minister Morissanda Kouaté. Harry is presenting the keynote address.
The General Assembly declared July 18—Mandela’s birthday—as a worldwide day in his honor, encouraging people to participate in community service projects as well as commemorate his life and achievements.
The 2020 UN Nelson Mendela Prize will be given to Dr. Morissanda Kouyaté of Guinea and Mrs. Marianna V. Vardinoyannis of Greece during the ceremony, which gets underway at 10 a.m. EST.
This award, which honors individuals who have committed their life to serving humanity, is given out every five years.
The Duchess of Sussex, Harry’s wife, will be by his side as he speaks at the U.N.
Before she wed the prince in 2015, the former actress participated at a session at the UN’s main office that was hosted by UN Women.
The pair left their position as senior members of the royal family in January 2020 and relocated to Southern California, the duchess’ home state, where they still reside with their two children.
On their final official trip together as a family before they stepped down from their royal duties, Harry and Meghan traveled to South Africa in 2019 with their son, Archie.
After a family vacation in Canada, they decided to leave the Royal Family and leave their positions behind before going to the US.
Just five months before she was killed in a car accident in Paris, Harry’s mother, the late Princess Diana, met Mandela in March 1997.
His address comes just after a shocking new book revealed that his Eton friends thought he was “f***ing nuts” for courting Meghan.
Harry invited Meghan to join him at Sandringham for his weekend shoot in 2016, according to journalist and author Tom Bower of “Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the conflict between the Windsors.”
They had just recently made their connection known to the public when the Prince reportedly asked 16 pals to spend the weekend with him.
Most of them were former classmates from Eton who now work for large financial institutions and auction houses and who joined him for lunch, dinner, and shooting with the Queen’s approval.
Bower claimed the Duke of Sussex had been delighted for a weekend of ‘endless banter’ with his mates, but Meghan, 40, was less than impressed and ‘questioned every guest’ who ‘contravened her awakened ideals’.
Meghan ‘lacked any sense of humour’ and was a ‘dampener on the party’, Bower says in his latest book, according to The Times newspaper.
She also reportedly ‘reprimanded them for their comments on sexism, feminism and transgender people’, with Bower stating that Harry had ‘not anticipated’ Meghan’s reaction.
He wrote: ‘She lacked any sense of humour. Driving home after Sunday lunch, the texts pinged between the cars: “OMG, what about HER?” said one. “Harry must be f***ing mad”.’
Bower alleges Meghan ‘reprimanded visitors’ if they made the ‘slightest inappropriate statement’ and ‘none was spared’.
The claims came after it was alleged Meghan ‘phoned her PR team in hysterics’ after Buckingham Palace responded with ‘fury’ to ‘her Vanity Fair interview regarding Prince Harry’.
Bower said Meghan was ‘ecstatic’ when she was asked to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair’s September 2017 edition and do an interview with the magazine.
But when the magazine ran with the headline ‘Wild About Harry’ on its cover – focusing on Meghan’s connection with the British royal rather than her job as an actor, activist and philanthropist – Bower believes the Palace was taken aback.
Within hours of the magazine’s pre-publication copies being given to Buckingham Palace, Bower says Meghan phoned her PR firm and ‘hysterically’ alerted them of the Palace’s outrage.
Bower reports that Meghan was unhappy that the piece was not more focused on her philanthropy but says this was owing to the fact Vanity Fair reporters were unable to substantiate two important stories she had given about her involvement as a young child.
After first mentioning Meghan’s speech at the United Nations and a letter she submitted to Procter & Gamble as an 11-year-old requesting that they remove a slogan advertising washing-up liquid that was thought sexist, she was asked about Harry.
Meghan reportedly stated, “We’re a couple,” as quoted by Vanity Fair in 2017. We are smitten.
I’m sure there will be a time when we have to present ourselves and have stories to share, but I’m hoping people will realize that this is our time.
These are for us. The fact that it is uniquely ours contributes to its uniqueness.
But we’re content. Personally, I enjoy a good love tale.
According to Bower, the editorial team at British Vogue was in “silent exasperation” after the Duchess guest-edited the September 2019 issue.
They criticized the former actress for omitting the Queen from her list of 15 women who she regarded as “forces for change,” calling her contributions “superficial.”
In one phone call, according to Bower, Meghan allegedly told the assembled editorial staff, “I want to break the internet.”
They thought the majority of her contributions lacked coherence and were superficial, he said.
She was never pressed for an explanation in order to avoid conflict.
In his book, the author claims that when the Queen learned that the Duchess would not be attending Prince Philip’s funeral, she said, “Thank goodness Meghan is not coming.”
According to reports, the Duchess was seven months pregnant with the couple’s daughter Lilibet and was advised by doctors not to fly.
However, the couple traveled to the UK with their two children last month for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, and sources say the monarch had a chance to meet her granddaughter.
After a private Royal Family lunch at Buckingham Palace, the young girl was reportedly introduced to Her Majesty, who had the nickname Lilibet as a child, in Windsor.
The Sussexes, who are in town from California and are staying at their old house Frogmore Cottage in Windsor, were unable to access the Buckingham Palace balcony yesterday and had to observe events from Horse Guards Parade.
The couple made their first public appearance with The Firm at the June event since the chilly Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in March 2020, just before they formally retired as senior royals.
It follows the assertion made by a royal expert that Prince Harry “doesn’t have great respect” for the Duchess of Cornwall and “has no interest” in “developing” a relationship with her.
Since Camilla, 75, wed Prince Charles in 2005, she has been the Duke of Sussex’s stepmother.
But according to royal authority Ingrid Seward, the couple’s relationship “went off the boil” and Harry no longer “has a great deal of warmth for her.”
Ingrid said: “I don’t think Harry is interested in growing a relationship with his stepmother at this stage in his life,” on the Mirror’s Pod Save the Queen podcast.
I don’t believe Harry feels particularly warm toward her; his feelings for her fluctuate.
Ingrid’s remarks follow Tina Brown’s assertion that the Duke “can’t stand” Camilla and might further his rift with the royal family by “going after” both of them in his upcoming memoirs. Tina Brown is the biographer of Princess Diana.
Speaking in April, Brown predicted that the estranged son of Prince Charles, who will release his memoirs later this year, would express his resentment.