UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has called for strengthening the United Nations as the world faces renewed global tensions, new and old conflicts as well as a fresh arms race, saying there was a need to consider how the world body can rebuild peace.
“A stronger United Nations is necessary not only to debate and discuss the issues but to translate the conscience of humanity, the words which are spoken in these halls into concrete decisions and actions,” Ambassador Munir Akram, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN, told the General Assembly.
“That is what would be meaningful reform of the United Nations,” the ambassador said, while supporting the 193-member bloc’s President Abdulla Shahid’s priorities for the remainder of the 76th session.
At the same time, Ambassador Akram said the deliberations in the General Assembly could not be divorced from the real world.
“We are witnessing a world today where global tensions, including between major powers, have revived. New and old conflicts abound, a new arms race is underway.”
The consensus on disarmament has eroded, new military alliances are being formed in various parts of the world, with the UN largely absent, he noted.
There was a need to consider how the United Nations can contribute to the reconstruction of peace in this world, the ambassador said, adding this effort must be built on the foundations of the principles of the UN Charter, international law and the resolutions of the General Assembly, especially the Security Council.
“We cannot ignore the global and multi-dimensional threats to international peace and security today and live only in hope,” Akram added.
The world is faced with a triple crisis — economic, social, and environmental, he warned.
Referring to the Covid-19 pandemic, the reversal by a decade or more of the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the existential threat of climate change, the ambassador pointed out that inequality was one common factor in all three dimensions,
He said 150 million people have been pushed back into extreme poverty, over 40 countries are facing debt distress, at least two dozen nations are facing food insecurity, and millions of people in conflict zones in Africa and Afghanistan face starvation and fatalities.
“These are urgent and critical situations for the peoples involved and the United Nations must display the urgency and the empathy that is required to address the suffering which we are seeing all across the world, in particular, across the developing world.”
Underscoring the need to generate the financing to enable the developing countries to recover from the pandemic and its reversal, Akram pointed out that the richer countries injected $17 trillion into their economies to revive and restore the damage, but the developing countries have not been able to access more than $100 billion in additional financing for recovery.
Climate change is an existential threat, especially for the small island developing countries and for vulnerable countries like Pakistan, he said.
“We have contributed the least and we have suffered the most from climate change,” he said, adding: “And yet we have not generated the resources required the $100 billion promised years ago.”
Earlier, outlining the five priories of his “Presidency of Hope”, Shahid, the UNGA president, also underscored the importance of his uplifting central theme, calling cynicism a “path to inaction” that would lull the international community into complacency and a “false belief that our actions do not matter.”
He urged the global community to recommit to vaccine equity as the only way to recover from the pandemic, calling for faster production and distribution of inoculations, and removal of barriers to rollout.
The president, whose “new year’s resolution” campaign calling for vaccine equity has the support of some 120 member states, will hold a high-level event on February 25 to galvanize momentum for universal Covid-19 vaccination.
Shahid noted the communities most adversely impacted by the pandemic often reside in the least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing states, which include his home country of the Maldives.
He called for economic strategies that align with global environmental priorities and preservation of natural resources, pointing to a high-level event on sustainable recovery from Covid-19 through tourism, which is slated for May.
When speaking about the needs of the planet, Shahid warned the dangers may not be imminent or apparent right now “but the path we are all on is the same.”
