United Nations: In a strong criticism of the functioning of the UN Security Council, India has said that the world body's "ineffectiveness" is imposing "severe costs on all of us", as it blamed the UN organ for failing to fight terrorism and use peacekeeping as a tool to secure peace. India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Asoke Mukerji, termed the annual report of the Council "opaque and unaccountable" and called it a "half-way house."
He said the report does not provide an answer to why the primary UN organ responsible for maintaining international peace and security "has allowed the world to slide further down the road to violence and conflict." "Why have more than 60 million people become the victims of this crisis? Why is the world seeing so many refugees from crisis situations? "We in the General Assembly do not receive any answers to this question. Nor, for that matter, does the general public.
The consequence is a severe erosion of the credibility of the Council itself," Mukerji said here yesterday at the General Assembly plenary meeting on the annual report of the Council. Focusing on the three areas of peacekeeping, the response to terrorism and inability to resolve disputes peacefully, Mukerji said the ineffectiveness of the Council is "imposing severe costs on all of us, especially developing countries."
"Going by its report, the Council seems unable to comprehend the nature of the socio-economic challenges faced by developing countries due to the breakdown of international peace and security, especially now when we are on the cusp of implementing Agenda 2030 adopted unanimously with the goal of eradicating poverty within a generation.
"This is due to the fact that for the past 70 years, only one developing country is represented as a permanent member in the Council, while our total membership in this Assembly is more than 134. We call for the urgent expansion of the Council, in order to add more developing country members in both its categories, to offset this problem," he said.
Mukerji criticised the Council's response to the threat posed by terrorism, especially in Africa and Asia, saying it has been "less than robust." "Despite all its exhortations and Resolutions, the report is silent on what actually the Council has done in terms of acting to meet this threat. The increasing number and brutality of terrorist acts meanwhile vividly illustrates the ineffectiveness of the Council to counter terrorism," he said.
He said the report does not reveal anything about the way in which the Council's sanctions regimes against terrorism function, "which by itself is a significant omission, hidden from our scrutiny in this Assembly."
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