Champion Voices is our new thought leadership series bringing the personal experiences and reflections of our Champions to the forefront. Every two weeks, we will hear from a different Champion through a short article exploring a topic that matters to them. From what first sparked their interest to the lessons learned along the way, we will move beyond the policy papers to shine a light on the authentic experiences, challenges, and motivations that shape their work. In this second edition, Ambassador De Battista shares what it meant to grow up in a society that did not recognise his identity, how he witnessed that society transform and why multilateralism needs more passion, more activism and better communication.
I grew up in a minority that my country did not recognise. There was no law that saw me, no language for my life, and for a long time little reason to believe that would change.
One evening, I asked my parents if we could sit down after work, because I had something important to tell them. I sent the message not knowing how they would take it. When I came out to them, they held me, with tears in their eyes.
I have carried that embrace ever since, and I know how rare it is. Countless people never got that evening, or that reaction. Many were met with silence, or the door. That is what privilege actually means. I know from the inside how exclusion feels, and I have watched my own society become better once it chose to embrace equality rather than fear it. That is why I am an International Gender Champion.
I come from Malta, the last country in the European Union to allow divorce, which it did by referendum when I was in my twenties. On our small and overwhelmingly Catholic island, a quiet set of rules governed life: who leads, who provides, who cares for the children and the sick and the old, usually without pay and without much thanks. None of it was written down. It did not need to be. It was simply the natural order of things, and we called it permanent. Then, in a single generation, my country changed its mind. Divorce in 2011. Marriage equality in 2017, passed almost unanimously by a parliament that a decade earlier would have found the idea unthinkable.
So I do not believe norms are facts of nature. They are choices a society keeps making, until enough of us decide differently. The rights were always there; the law had simply not caught up, and our job is to keep the pressure on until it does.
I learned that early. As a student, when the university banned a contraceptive dispenser, we did not back down. We handed out hundreds of free contraception kits during Freshers Week instead. No one stopped us. It was cheeky and it was serious, and it taught me that you answer a closed door by widening it for everyone behind you.
That is the spirit I brought to Geneva, and it is not the usual one. When I arrived, a colleague told me our job was mostly to read out statements written for us at head office. I disagreed then and I disagree now. Anyone who says there is no room for activism in diplomacy is wrong. Multilateralism needs more passion, more activism and better communication, not less.
Part of that work really is about words. My commitment as a Champion is to push for strong, clear and intersectional language on gender equality in the texts we negotiate, because those words decide whether a girl's right to health is named or quietly dropped. But just as much of it is listening. I spend as much time trying to understand where the sceptics come from, because that is how you actually move people, and because when you have the right answers, you are never afraid to listen.
And there are plenty of sceptics, some well funded and well organised. The movement against gender equality rests on one clever trick: it frames rights as a contest, men against women, competing for a fixed share. That is false. Rights are not a fixed pie. They are a system, and a system that protects everyone is more durable, and harder to unpick, than one that protects only some. Extending rights to more people does not thin them out; it makes the whole structure more secure, including for those who already had them. Equality takes nothing from men to give to women. Men and boys are not opponents in this. They are stakeholders in it.
The better institutions, fairer economies and safer communities that follow are real, and worth naming, but they are not the heart of the case. The heart of it is simpler: a society with room for everyone is a stronger, safer and better one. So how can we let hate and prejudice win over our message of love and hope?
I am an optimist, and not a naive one, because I have watched a small and traditional island decide to grow up without falling apart. I am also a realist. What is won can be lost, in either direction, and change never arrives on its own. It has to be argued for, resourced and led, by people willing to be unpopular for a while and passionate enough to keep going.
That is the diplomat I try to be, and the reason is simple. I remember the evening my parents held me, when so many others were turned away. Given that, why would I ever do this quietly?