India starts two-year tenure as non-permanent member of UNSC

 

 

INDIA, which has been at the forefront of the years-long efforts to reform the UN Security Council, began its two-year tenure as a non-permanent member of the powerful organ of the world body on Friday.

 

India will sit in the 15-nation United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for the 2021-22 term as a non-permanent member - the eighth time that the country has had a seat on the powerful horseshoe table. On Friday, India, Norway, Kenya, Ireland and Mexico joined non-permanent members Estonia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia and Vietnam and the five permanent members China, France, Russia, UK and the US.

 

India will be UNSC President in August 2021 and will preside over the council again for a month in 2022. The presidency of the council is held by each of the members in turn for one month, following the English alphabetical order of the Member States’ names. India, the endorsed candidate from the Asia-Pacific States, won 184 votes out of the 192 ballots cast in the elections in June for the five non-permanent seats of the Security Council.

 

Indonesia retired at the end of 2020, leaving India to succeed it on the Council. Vietnam is the other Asian country holding a non-permanent seat on the 15-member Council. “As the largest democracy…we will be promoting very fundamental values like democracy, human rights and development,” India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T S Tirumurti told PTI.

 

India’s message will also be to ensure “how do we let diversity flourish in a united framework, which is in many ways the United Nations itself. This is something which India as a country, as what it stands for, will take to the council.

Tirumurti said India will “definitely” emphasise a greater need for cooperation in the council, which should not be a place where because of any paralysis of decision making, urgent requirements do not get properly focused.