How long ‘rightful voices’ of developing world and Africa denied at UN? asks India

New Delhi: India has on Tuesday, Nov 9, asserted that exclusion, inequality, and conflict are relevant to the functioning of the UN Security Council and wondered how long "the rightful voices" of the developing world, including Africa, can be denied. 

"We are convinced that reformed multilateralism, with the reform of the UN Security Council at its core, is crucial for dealing with the complex challenges of today's world," Minister of State for External Affairs Dr Rajkumar Ranjan Singh said at the High-Level Open Debate of the UN Security Council on 'Exclusion, Inequality and Conflict' in New York.

India, along with several other partners, has been pressing hard for UN reforms at the earliest.

"The international structure for maintaining peace and security and peacebuilding needs to be reformed. Global power and the capacities to address problems are much more dispersed today than they were seventy-six years ago," he pointed out.

The President of Mexico chaired the event. Dr Singh is Lok Sabha MP of BJP, representing the Inner Manipur constituency participated in the conference. 

During the visit, he will also meet with senior UN leadership and interact with members of the Indian community in New York.

In his speech, the Minister said during the past few decades, while the inter-state conflicts have decreased, the "intra-state conflicts" have attracted much higher levels of attention from the UNSC.

"These conflicts have, however, several long-standing political, economic and social causes which require attention not only of this Council but also of other organs of the United Nations," he said.

"There is clearly much to be done to help the countries in intra-state conflicts to achieve sustainable peace," Dr Singh said.

He underlined that the international efforts in the maintenance of peace and security need to be inclusive. 

"The process of implementing a peace agreement must run along with the provision of humanitarian and emergency assistance, resumption of economic activity, and the creation of political and administrative institutions that improve governance and include all stakeholders," he said.