Chennai: India, which has been at the forefront of the years-long efforts to reform the UN Security Council, on Friday began its two-year tenure as a non-permanent member of the powerful organ of the world body.
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.
In 2021, India, Norway, Kenya, Ireland and Mexico join 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 in the Council.
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’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T S Tirumurti has said that as the world’s largest democracy, India will promote fundamental values like human rights and development and reinforce multilateralism while underlining the need for greater cooperation in the United Nations Security 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 said.
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 we stand for’ will take to the Council.
Tirumurti had 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 don’t get properly focused. We would like to have a more cooperative structure in which we genuinely look out and find solutions and go beyond the rhetoric”.
India will also underscore the importance of respect for rule of law and international law.
“I feel that India’s presence in the Security Council is needed at this juncture when there are deep fissures between P-5 themselves and also between other countries. UN is losing coherence and we hope to bring this back by focusing on issues of priority to all Member States,” he had said.